“And
again He entered Capernaum after some
days, and it was heard that He was in the house. Immediately many gathered together, so that
there was no longer room to receive them,
not even near the door. And He preached
the word to them. Then they came to Him,
bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. And when they could not
come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let
down the bed on which the paralytic was lying.
He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you,
arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.’”
Mark 2:1-4, 10b-11. [New King James Bible]
Depending on where you’re standing, you will
see either a roof or a ceiling.
Depending on where Jesus is standing, you will see an opportunity or a
hindrance. Roofs/ceilings are usually
positive things providing coverage and protection for humans and things and
property, etc. In this story the
roof/ceiling was doing its job for those inside the house had no problem with
it. Jesus was inside the house with them
“under” the ceiling/roof, and He had no problem with it either. The owner of the house, Peter, had no problem
with the roof. When the four men arrived
carrying their paralyzed friend on a normal and spacious day, all would have
been well. But on this day they were
faced with too many obstacles i.e. people who were not giving up their space
for charity in any way to get their space in the place. “Sorry chaps.
You should have come earlier, and then you would have gotten a
seat.” These guys would not be denied
their much needed audience with Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Healer, the
“Raiser-Upper-from-the-dead” Guy. To the
roof! On Dancer, on Prancer, on Blitzen,
Comet, and Cupid . . . Oh no, there is no chimney. Sometimes it is necessary to think outside-of-the-box
to get what you need. “Let’s create a
sky-light for this house. I hear they’re
very popular, especially so windowless rooms can receive light.”
Who we are decides what we can do. It is not and should not be the other way
around. What I do should not define who
I am, for if I change what I do, or if life’s circumstances alter what I’m able
to do, then what do I become? At the end
of the day, who am I? Jesus was always
(and always will be) the Son of Almighty God, but many people on their way to
learning His identity would define Him by what He did, and said. This is why the Pharisees had a problem with
Him telling this man his sins were forgiven, for since only God could forgive
men’s (and women’s) sins, who was Jesus claiming to be? God?
“Certainly not”! J (These of course were their surmisings.)
If we are habitually lying the world labels us
as “liars”. But what and who are we if
we live a life of telling the truth?
Prudes? Puritans? If we kill and murder adults and people on
two feet we are murderers. But if we
fight to save those not yet born we are extremists? Why are positive actions, acts and
life-styles given negative labels and connotations just because people make a
passionate stand?
When you know who you really are, then you will
and can do what you are created to do.
What I do is defined by who I am and who I am is defined by Whose
I am. When I know Whose I am, then I can accept all the positives He has for me. When I know the true character of the One
Whose I am, then I am liberated from what and who my earthly world has shaped
me to be and to become, so I may become and be who and what I was created to be.
When Jesus is in the house, no roof or ceiling
can keep me from expanding, growing or getting to Him. No limited world views or culture mores, or
religious or legalistic rules and rituals can prevent me from becoming all He
has destined me to become, neither from receiving from Him all He plans and
desires to give me. All ceilings have to
be removed, all roofs have to be blown off! Especially those created inside my own mind. :-)
There once was a happy little grasshopper that
was doing what grasshoppers do: hopping
along in the green grass minding his own business. When along came a boy with a box wanting to
catch a . . . hmmm grasshopper for show-and-tell in school. Much to the chagrin of the grasshopper the
boy captured him in his transparent prison with a happy grin. But the grasshopper could not continue along
his merry way. He was trapped. Days passed before and after show-and-tell
and the grasshopper continued hopping inside the box when one day the boy’s
father convinced him to set the grasshopper free. The boy took the grasshopper outside into the
yard and removed the top, but the grasshopper just continued hopping inside the
box. He could not understand why the
grasshopper would not hop out of the box, but it was because the top of the box
had conditioned the grasshopper to the height of the box, for it had become its
new ceiling. Life before the box was one
without limitations. Life in the box
changed its perspective making its world smaller than before.
This is what happened to humans in the Garden
of Eden – before Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, they lived a life without
limitations except for the fruit being off limits to them. In God there are no limitations for us to
becoming all He has created us to be. We
put the limitations upon ourselves when we take our focus off of Him and put
our attention upon ourselves and each other.
We begin to take on the likeness of the one or ones we gaze at and think
on the most. Therefore, since God is
omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient anything or anyone other than Him is a
“less than” meaning they have a ceiling on them. J
What should we do if we find ourselves in a
limiting situation? Well I will answer
that question with another story. You
can find this one in the Old Testament book of Exodus 13, specifically for this
article are verses 31-33. This is such a
good read, “But the men who had gone up
with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.’ And they gave the children of Israel a bad
report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ‘The land through which we
have gone as spies is a land that
devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw
the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we
were in their sight.” [New
King James Bible] Emphases in italics are theirs, not mine. (Green font is my idea, for special effects.)
J This is
important to know for it helps us to understand what they believed about themselves.
The 10 spies had assumed to know how the
natives of the land saw them without having yet encountered them. They had a “navel” view of themselves. Also, they did not know how powerful they
were because they were looking at the giants they could see, forgetting the God
Who had delivered them from Pharaoh and his army, which by the way all drowned
in the Red Sea, right before their eyes.
There’s nothing wrong with being a grasshopper if you are indeed a
grasshopper, because God created them too for a purpose. The problem is when we take on a grasshopper
mentality when we ourselves are giants, and the problem is when we don’t know
that the sky is indeed the limit and we instead continue jumping up and down
inside a box that either someone else has built around us, or captured us with
either mentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually, or any other
–ally. But to every problem there is a
solution whether or not we know yet what (or WHO) it is. However the answer to all is to focus on Jesus
the Christ for He knows just what we need to remove all ceilings and
limitations no matter where we find ourselves (inside the box with a fox), or
wherever He may be, whether inside the (our) house or outside of the house (or with
Three Bears and Goldilocks). All things
are possible with Him. So go ahead, let
Him take the roof off of your circumstances and life, then jump as high, and as
far as you can go.
Peace.
