Luke 17- Doing Our Part

So Jesus is walking through and there are ten guys with leprosy. They ask Jesus to have mercy on them, he tells them to go show themselves to the priest, and they get healed. Sounds like a pretty basic Jesus miracle, right?

But wait. Did you catch the part where Jesus didn't heal them until they were already on their way to see the priest? Look at the story again- he instructs them to show themselves to the priests, which is what lepers were supposed to do to verify that they were, indeed, cleansed of leprosy. Seeing the priest is something you do after you've been healed. And that's what Jesus told them to do- go show themselves to the priest. And they obeyed; they set off to see the priests, even though they hadn't been healed yet. Luke says that they were cleansed on the way.

I wonder how long it took- if they were all cleansed simultaneously or one at a time, if it happened after a few steps or when they had almost arrived or somewhere in between. I wonder how long they each had to keep walking, still lepers, but having faith that they would be healed by the time they made it to the priests.

And I wonder how often we ask God for something, and he's going to give it to us- but first we have to follow his instructions. I wonder if there are situations in our lives where we have to make our move while we're still in a particular situation or circumstance, believing God will do what he said by the time we reach our destination. For that matter, notice that Jesus didn't even say, "Go see the priests, and I'll heal you on the way there." He never promised to cleanse them, but the instructions he gave implied that cleansing would indeed occur, and they did what he said. I wonder, too, when we set off to follow God's instructions, still in the midst of a given situation, how long the journey to our destination may take. Will the healing or remedy or whatever else come as soon as we start taking the first steps? Will it come in the middle of the journey? Or will it come at the last minute, just as we are approaching the destination?

This miracle, the cleansing of the ten lepers, reminds me that God doesn't always work in predictable, cut-and-dried ways. And it reminds me that, regardless, we should follow him, believing that he has a plan. He does have a plan- but sometimes before we can see the plan's completion, we must do our part by following his instructions in faith.