Jesus cares about us too. He cares about our spiritual health, our relationships, and our physical health as well.
The Gospel writer, Luke, shares an encounter Jesus had with ten lepers. You can read about it in Luke 17:11-19. These lepers had a lot going against them. First off they had a disease. Any type of sickness is unpleasant. A few of the symptoms of this illness include ulcers on the skin, growths or nodules on the skin, thick, dry stiff skin, discolored skin, and numbness with loss of feeling. The loss of feeling can lead to an unawareness of pain that protects from danger like extreme heat or contact with sharp objects.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, having leprosy included the pain of being isolated. Contact with others was restricted. For health reasons and religious reasons, people avoided contact with people who had leprosy. What else did they have going against them? At least one of them was a foreigner from Samaria. For centuries Jews looked down on Samaritans as half-breeds who mixed their worship of God with the worship of idols. 2 Kings 17:24-34 gives insight on how all this began.
Back to our ten lepers. They were sick, isolated and despised because of where they were from. Then Jesus comes along. They cry out to Jesus and He responds. Then on their way to see the priest as they were instructed to do, everything changed. No longer sick. Which meant they were no longer isolated. Their day sure got a whole lot better in an instant.
One of them returns to Jesus and receive something else. Acceptance! His praise to God was accepted. Jesus even questions why the others didn’t return to do the same. But this cleansed person recognized how truly special Jesus was. Jesus was THE ONE and the only one to worship! His embrace of Jesus communicated there was no need to worship anything or anyone else. He found complete healing! Trifecta!
What does Jesus offer us? This encounter demonstrates how Jesus cared about the whole person. Not just their physical health, but their social and spiritual well-being too. Jesus cares about us too. He cares about our spiritual health, our relationships, and our physical health as well. When any of these areas are suffering, we’d do well to follow the example of the lepers and cry out to God for help. Then when He responds, react like the one who returned to praise Him.
