I came across this story the other day. My team and I were discussing how sometimes it feels like we aren’t making the biggest difference as “missionaries”. But God spoke to me during this and I think people all over the world, no matter where you are or what you job is can learn as much as I did from it
There was once a man who suffered from an unknown and highly contagious disease. Soon after his birth, unsightly sores and ulcerations appeared spottily on the surface of his skin. The infirmity soon spread across whatever warm patches of pigment remained, covering his body with festering boils and cankerous blisters. He was told that if any other living creature were to come into direct contact with him, it would become infected immediately. Within minutes, the limb of the contaminated person would supposedly appear burnt and inflamed, producing bubbling tumors as if a fire was boiling beneath the skin.
His family exhausted every effort to contain the scourge, but to no avail. They were forced to quarantine him as best they could, eventually resorting to wrapping him from head to toe in thick bandages. The pain of his disease was difficult to bear, but not nearly as punishing as the anguish of isolation. His plaster casting was more tortuous than the leprosy itself, holding him hostage in a skin-tight cotton coffin; and though it served as necessary protection for others, it spelled perpetual imprisonment for him. Rather than parading the streets like a mummified corpse, he fashion himself a heavy hooded cloak made from mohair, which he harvested from his family’s flock of billy goats. He then obtained his inheritance and left his hometown, dedicating the majority of his life and wealth toward discovering a cure for his condition.
Word spread quickly throughout the land that a devil had been born with wildfire in his bones. Campfire horror stories and town-hall hearsay told of a mysterious hooded figure who wore the wool of a goat and roamed restlessly across the kingdom. Singalong songs were chanted in the taverns, warning any who wander at night to beware, for the slightest touch from the rotten-rover will set the unsuspecting soul ablaze. Many considered him cursed by God, others assumed he was simply a legend that had been fabricated to keep children on the straight and narrow. But there were some whose paths he actually happened to cross that were not overcome with terror; instead they were moved with sympathy and sorrow for his miserable state, often offering him food [from a safe distance] and assisting him in locating the nearest infirmary.
Throughout his travels, the leper had depleted every last dime of his substantial fortune, pursuing the insufficient expertise of physicians and shamans, medicine men and miracles workers, witch doctors and faith healers. Each one had attempted to relieve him in their own way – potions and lotions, leeches and elixirs, incense and oils, dark spells and holy prayers – but nothing would alleviate the affliction. He had since been reduced to a vagrant beggar, drifting from village to village, crouching in street corners, and scrimping scraps of food. Occasionally a passerby would sling coins in his direction in an attempt to gain favor with God, though most people would not go anywhere near him. Some would cross to the other side of the street as he approached, in fear of contracting his disease; others would gaze intently at the ground to avoid eye contact, in fear of succumbing to his curse.
As the rover was wandering through an unfamiliar town, he started hearing strange stories about a reclusive monk who possessed special powers. Apparently, this mysterious sage lived high up in the mountainside and had been heralded as a foolproof healer by the few daring pilgrims who managed to reach his hermitage. Unfortunately, none of the villagers seemed to have actually seen one of these patients in the flesh. Nevertheless, the monk’s rumored resume touted a long history of mending whatever illnesses or ailments happened to pester his visitors. However dangerous the journey might be, the desperate leper knew that he had nothing else to lose. He set out at once, climbing precariously for days over jagged boulders and snow-capped bluffs, until he finally arrived at a quaint doorway carved into the side of a cliff.
Inside the dimly lit sanctuary sat an unassuming man, draped in common cloth, perched quietly on the floor with his back toward the entrance. As the leper timidly approached, the monk remained perfectly still, so motionless that for a moment he wondered if the figure was actually a statue. The closer he inched quietly toward the silhouette, the more his mind assured him that the form was merely a shrine. He stopped halfway through the room, and considered if he should perhaps light a candle and utter a prayer in order to invoke the special powers. But then a startling voice emerged from the monk, echoing loudly around the chamber, “Why have you come?”
After a moment of nervous silence, he proceeded to explain the extent of his dreadful disease and the agony of his lifelong segregation from the world. But before he could finish, the monk interrupted him.
“I have heard the stories of your plight. But the question remains unanswered. Why have you come?”
The rover replied, “They say that you have the antidote for every affliction known to man.”
“What you have heard is true,” the voice responded. “Have you come for healing then?”
Growing impatient, he lowered his threadbare hood, exposing the mangled mess of stained gauze smothering his head. “If you know my story, then you know my intentions. Would I have bothered to climb this deadly mountain for anything less than a cure?”
At this the monk spun abruptly around, revealing the gentle features of his weathered face, and smiled ever so slightly. He rose to his feet swiftly, standing perfectly straight and peering deeply into the eyes of the leper, paying no attention whatsoever to his grotesque appearance. “Those who seek a cure seek only relief. Those who desire healing must understand the price. Unwrap your hand so that I can behold the degree of your disease.”
The leper began painfully wrenching away the ragged bandages that had adhered to the rotten flesh of his hand. As he unwrapped, he cautiously reminded the monk that any physical contact would result in irreversible infection. But rather than the usual revulsion that followed these warnings, nuanced in a subtle shifting stance or a folding of the arms, the healer stepped forward instead. He stretched out his hand, saying, “Only if you touch me will your healing begin.”
Despite his hesitation, the leper extended his disfigured fist and faintly brushed his trembling forefinger against the soft skin of the monk’s palm. Before the unfamiliar feeling of touch had even completed its cycle through his atrophied nerve-endings, the monk sat back down suddenly and sullenly, as if he were tired. The rover peered down at his own spoiled skin, studying the surface intently, awaiting some sign of metamorphosis. He expected the abscesses to fall from his body like ash from an urn, unveiling the coral hue of a new tender epidermis. But his hand remained… maimed, mutilated, and unchanged.
The monk maintained his unbroken gaze and said, “I am truly sorry, my friend.”
Devastated, he dropped heavily to his knees, muttering hopelessly, “But you said my healing would begin…”
“And so it has,” the monk replied, with a partial smile that now carried a melancholy tinge, “but there is no cure for your condition.”
Confused and consumed with despair, the leper lowered his head and began to weep. “At least now I know. I will always suffer. I will always have this pain.”
But just then, through his stinging tears, he faintly perceived the right hand of the monk, burnt and inflamed, broken and blistered, as if a fire was burning beneath the skin. He looked up, speechless, surprised to see a stream of tears flowing down the healer’s cheeks. They leaned closely together, and the monk whispered in his ear, “But you will no longer suffer alone.”
End of Story
But you will no longer suffer alone. This is what I feel Christ is calling us into. I know a lot of us want to share God’s love but we often feel we have to go far away or do something really huge to make a difference. I think more often than not it’s the little things God places right in front of us that make the biggest difference. Sometimes when we see people suffering it’s a call to not fix their problem but just to sit with them in their suffering. God created us for relationship. He created us not out of necessity but purely a desire. He wanted us and he still does. He created man and saw that he was alone and said not good. So he gave the man eve. By doing this he did more than give the man a wife. It’s much simpler but at the same time so much more profound. He gave the man someone so that he wouldn’t be alone. And that’s what I feel is my calling on the race and in life. Sometimes you can’t heal someone and sometimes you just need to suffer with them. To climb down in the hole instead of pulling them up. People want to feel seen. People want to know that someone out there cares for them. Christ did this same thing coming to earth. He joined us to not only be the good news but to endure in our suffering. To let us know that we are not alone. And he went above and beyond in his effort by enduring the cross. I love this story because it talks to the core essence of what we want as humans. We crave these things. To be seen. Touched. Loved. Noticed. And I think that’s important as Christina in the body of Christ to notice the people we pass that get passed by every day but never seen. How can we notice them? How can we show them love?
Love Y’all
Thomas Pond
