"I have seizures"

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I was talking to a friend. She was telling me of her experience at a Homeless Shelter where she thought that she'd be ladling soup for their lunches. Instead, upon arrival she was whisked away on a whole different assignment before she realized what in the world they were doing. Bottom line is, they quickly pushed her into a room with the "homeless" and told her to go talk to them. In answer to her horrified wide-eyed woe that took control of her face, the guy told her, "Don't worry, they'll talk. They'll tell you everything."


Regardless of what he said. She worried! She went. But she was scared!


She saw a young woman working on a word puzzle. As my friend sat next to her she said, "Oh, I love puzzles! Could you use some company? Do you mind if I sit next to you and help?"


The woman nodded she could.


And then, the man was right... the woman just started talking. It was like he said, she told her everything. And then, right in the middle, like it was nothing, she said, "I have seizures."


"Oh!" my friend replied. And then to me she said, "What do you say to that?"


I was laughing hysterically! I felt that girl's feeling! I told my friend, "Oh my goodness, I have seizures too!" Maybe not the medical kind.... but like the story told of the boy in Matthew 17, I feel like sometimes when something's said or something hits, I'm like him. It throws me into the fire! Or sometimes into the water and tries to drown me. I need attention! I need help! I start seizing and lose control of myself!


I love that story! The one I just mentioned found in Matthew 17. Starting at verse 14, it's told like this:


"When they came to the crowd, a man approached Jesus and knelt before Him. "Lord, have mercy on my son," he said. "He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not heal him." "O unbelieving and perverse generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to Me." Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of the boy, and he was healed from that moment."


"Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water."


NLT, "Lord, have mercy on my son. He has seizures and suffers terribly..."


NASB, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is a lunatic and is very ill...."


KJV (and my most favorite!), "Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is a lunatic, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. And I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him."


Jesus' reply was: "Bring the boy to Me."!!! I LOVE it!


To parallel with this boy's sickness, we too sometimes suffer a similar spiritual illness. If not us, then our "son" or our daughter or our friend or our spouse or our mother or our father or our sister or our brother or someone we know or someone we've met. We become a "lunatic" (or they do) and "sore vexed"... and we lose control! We have a fit of rage or of bitterness or of madness or meanness or jealousy or envy or     (you fill in the blank)     and it throws us into the fire. Or it tries to drown us in the pit of deepest waters of despair and anguish. And no one around us can heal us. Yet, Jesus watches and Jesus sees, and still I'm sure He still beacons with those same very words said in Matthew 17, "Bring the boy to Me." Or, if it's us: "Come hither to Me!" And with His touch and His word, He does the same as He did then, and we are "healed from that moment."


You know "that moment"....? One of those kinds of moments? Might you need to be healed from "that moment" that makes you go crazy and act as a lunatic in all kinds of madness when you remember it? Man can't fix that! But Jesus can heal you from "that moment"! We simply have to go to Him to let Him. Or, when it's not us, but it's someone else, we have to take them... not to somebody else, but take them only to Jesus Himself!


May we remember this! And next time we see someone acting out and making an idiot of themselves by the way that they're acting... we're NOT to take them (by talking about them) to another! No! Instead, we can simply mutter a quick prayer beneath our breath and tell Jesus, "She needs You! She's having a seizure!" And Lord have mercy, next time when it's us that's seizing, may somebody be near enough to us and to Him to return us the favor! For we have great need to be rescued from all sorts of seizing in all kind of "moments" that throw us into fires and deep waters!


Back to the girl who said, "I have seizures." I think I'd wrap my arm with compassion around the girl if she had told me and I'd tell her, "Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Sometimes I have seizures too." And then I hope I'd have the guts to hold her hand and say, "Come on, let's go tell Jesus"......
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