Ping me

Eschewing the normal, straightforward list of demands, I got into the spirit of both the season and the workplace earlier this month with this email directed at my office Secret Santa: 

MEMO
To: Santa
From: Floyd
Date: 9 December
Re: North Pole initiatives

Circling back on our facetime Saturday last at your mall locale, the following deliverables are actionable items that will incent buy-in for non-naughty core competencies in your key demographic (me):

▪ Gift cards (Home Depot, iTunes, Ace Hardware, Dunkin Donuts) -- highly scalable
▪ Cleveland sports paraphernalia (Browns, Indians, Cavaliers) -- guaranteed not to be repurposed
▪ Items related to animals (30,000-foot view); cats, ducks, elephants, polar bears, rhinos (granular view)
▪ Baked goods -- but let's ramp down the candy for minimal pushback from the dentist next week
▪ Alcohol -- a robust solution to roll out a quick win

At the end of the day, our mission-critical takeaway is that whatever low-hanging fruit we bring to the table, productizing the joy of the season should not gain traction over established best practices, i.e., a full-on go-live of peace on earth, good will toward human capital.

Things are looking up

Another visit to the hematologist, another dose of good news.

After four months of good eating and right living, my white-cell count is about the same, but my platelets have crawled into the normal range. I guess I can thank my daily vitamin D supplement and weekly serving of red meat for that.

And here's a shocker: My weight was 154.3, a personal record. That's 22 pounds higher than the low I hit in 2007 that sent me to the doctor in the first place.

All is well!

Claim and proclaim

You may remember a series of posts I wrote in February and March about healing. The focus then was mainly on physical healing, but the principles apply to all kinds of healing, including emotional and relational.

The second part of the series was based on the passage in the Gospel of Luke about the woman with "an issue of blood" and how she received healing by pushing through the crowd to get to the source of healing, Jesus. And he so overflows with healing that all it took for her was to touch the edge of the back of his garment.

I love the last part of the story, as told by Luke:

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.”

This passage is so loaded with messages, I'll have to go a phrase at a time. Pay attention now; this is for you.

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed,

This woman had tried to disappear into the crowd, but Jesus easily singled her out as the one among the many. She had been shunned by the crowd because of her problem, but now she was trying to blend in.

How many times have you found yourself alone in the midst of a crowd, surrounded by dozens or even thousands of people, not one of whom knows you or understands your pain? One place where it happens to a lot of people is in church. You show up on Sunday, dressed in your finest clothes and burdened with your darkest secrets, and just hope no one notices you or discovers your uncleanness. Most of the crowd won't take any note of you because they're too busy worrying that someone will notice them and discover their uncleanness. Or they're just there to find a mate or to see the spectacle or to kill a couple of hours on a slow weekend.

But Jesus notices us. We can't avoid him or evade him. He sees that monkey on your back, that baggage in your hand, that cloud over your head. And he knows why you're really there.

... came trembling and fell at his feet.

This woman had spent years in forced isolation, totally shunned by society – particularly by the rigid religious types. The society and the sanctimonious had no sympathy for her, only revulsion and rejection and condemnation. But now at last she had found someone who had compassion for her, and who had already healed her.

So she did the only two things she could do: She surrendered and she worshipped.

Those are a couple of tough things for us -- any of us, but especially us Americans (and particularly us of the male persuasion) -- to do. We're so self-sufficient and self-actualized and self-reliant and self-centered and self-worshiping that we find it very difficult or indeed impossible to acknowledge a force greater than our will, much less submit to it.

But let's face it: Surrender and worship are the only appropriate responses to an encounter with Jesus. Compared to him we are nothing, and to pretend otherwise is not only blasphemous, it's downright ridiculous. Your refusal to worship at the feet of Jesus is like a little poodle yapping at a Great Dane; to anyone with any perspective it's just silly.

So quit yapping and worship the God who stands before you.

In the presence of all the people,

Not in reverent silence, not in her private prayer closet, not anonymously over the phone. In the presence of ALL the people. Yes, those people. The people who had condemned her and rejected her and recoiled from her. The people who didn't have what she had. The people whose faith and commitment were not sufficient to draw Jesus' attention. In the presence of those people,

she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed.

The sister testified. She told the story of how she got over. She said she wasn't gonna talk about it but she couldn't keep it to herself. It was like fire shut up in her bones.

When you find a good dentist or a good pediatrician or a good barber, don't you tell everyone you know about it? When you receive a healing from the Good Shepherd, should you do any less? Shouldn't you tell everybody about it, so they can get in on the action too? You're not ashamed to refer someone to your car salesman; why are you ashamed to refer them to your Healer and Redeemer?

She told why she had touched him. She acknowledged her uncleanness before all the people, and she was not ashamed. She was not ashamed, because there was a second clause in that sentence: "how she had been instantly healed." Jesus had taken away her reproach, and now there was no condemnation. She could speak freely of it because now, thanks to the healing power of Jesus, she was free of it.

Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty! I'm free at last!

Then he said to her, "Daughter, ..."

Daughter. ... My child. ... My flesh and blood. ... My baby. ... Possessor of my heritage and bearer of my future. Now you are all this. You used to be all that -- dirty, unwanted, untouchable, unclean -- but now you are all this. What a remarkable, miraculous, sudden reversal. But how?

"Your faith has healed you."

Notice that Jesus doesn't take credit for what had just happened. It happened because of her action, driven by her faith. She reached out to him because she believed. He didn't do anything but show up. He didn't wave his hand or utter a prayer or lay his hands on her. Heck, he wasn't even facing her when she reached out and grabbed the healing that was there waiting for her.

It was available to her as long as she was willing to push through that hostile, disapproving, sanctimonious, celebrity-mad, profane, faith-challenged crowd, which represents the world and the church. She said, "I don't care what they all think about me or believe about him, I'm going to reach out and claim my healing."

Are you ready to claim your healing today? Are you determined enough to fight your way through the obstructing crowd and get close enough to Jesus to receive his readily available healing? Are you prepared to surrender your ego and your pride and your failed efforts to fix things yourself? Are you ready to worship at the feet of the Great Physician and admit and declare that he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? If you will do these simple things, then and only then will you be able to do as this woman did:

Go in peace.