Encountering the Great Physician

Encountering Jesus can be painful. So often we think of an encounter with God as this wonderful, warm, fulfilling experience. We forget that most people who encountered God in the Bible--or even just an angel--were terrified.

Yesterday I had to go to the foot doctor to get a plantar wart removed that had gotten infected, had a nasty abscess, and was giving me a lot of pain. The doctor was this easy-going guy. He liked to make small talk and tell stories. But he also had to cut this thing out of my foot. And it hurt. And I'm still having trouble walking.

It was very, very good to get the bad stuff out of my foot. But it involved pain. It was inconvenient. It took a while to heal. But there was no way around it. I could have had it frozen—-much less pain doing that. But I’d tried that before and it kept coming back, and now it was all infected. I needed to look my doctor in the eye and ask him to go in there and take it out. Knowing that it would hurt. (My apologies to you who think this is gross. And my apologies to those of you who’ve had to undergo much more serious pain in order to be made well…)

Encountering Jesus can be painful. Sometimes in the church people call him “The Great Physician.” And it sounds so wonderful and comforting. But maybe “The Great Surgeon” would be more to the point. I knew a pastor that called him “the great surgeon of the heart.” Jesus exposes people’s hearts so that he can heal them.

I really wish the foot doctor could have vaporized the bad tissue in my foot and healed me with no pain whatsoever. That's how it works in Star Trek. But not in real life. And certainly not when it comes to matters of the heart.

Jesus is the Great Physician. And he loves us and desires our well being. But he is also skilled with the knife and unafraid to use it on our calloused, stony hearts.

Psalm 139:23-24 says:
"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

Here's my prayer: that I would be willing to submit to Jesus' surgery, that I would not shy away from it. That I would not be satisfied with painkillers to numb the pain and in so doing ignore the root of the problem. That I would make David's prayer in Psalm 139 my prayer.