The devotional below shows why Living Room is such an important ministry. It’s a sample of the kind of messages people at Living Room hear. We are reassured of the great love and compassion of Jesus. We need this kind of reminder, because for many of us the world is not a friendly place.

 

And a leper came to him beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I will; be clean.”

Mark 1:40-41 (RSV)

 

At the time Jesus lived, touching an outcast with contagious leprosy was unthinkable. Imagine how it must have felt to be such a person, banned from living with the friends and family he knew and loved. When the leper in this story asked Jesus if he was willing to heal him, Jesus responded with compassion and healed him.

Consider the great love Jesus must have felt for this “untouchable,” to willingly reach out to him and touch him! It’s one thing to have compassion and heal a lame man or a blind man, but to lay hands on a person with ugly sores all over his body? How great the love of Jesus!

Jesus came close to the leper and cared for him like the real person he was – a person deserving a normal life, a person deserving love.

We who live with mental illnesses are sometimes treated a bit like lepers were years ago. Too often we are shunned, not accepted like others, not considered people to get close to. Imagine how it would have felt to have Jesus show us the kind of dignity we had been missing.

But he does – even now.

With tenderness he cares for us and reaches out, like he did to the leper. He offers to heal the pain we have inside. And he can do that in a way no one else can.

marja