Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 4 verses 46 through 54:
46 Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ 49The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ 50Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, ‘Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.’ 53The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, ‘Your son will live.’ So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
For anyone who has ever worried or still worries over the wellness or the future of a child this is a scripture to which to cleave.
“Go; your son will live,” Jesus tells the father. And the father believes Jesus in his deepest place and goes — going solely in faith, “he certainty of things hoped for but not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).
We must go on living even when we do not yet see. We must go on living, and trusting, and believing, and hoping in the truth of Jesus’ words. The Lord “is not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9). The Lord is on our side. The Lord is on the side of our children. The Lord is on the side of all those for whom we worry.
“Go;” Jesus says, “your child will live.” We go on. Like the father in the story we come back down the mountain of prayer. We trust God has heard our pleas. We believe Jesus when he speaks life and not death. We turn and we walk by faith and not by sight. We walk in hope and not in fear.
In one of her “Showings” Julian of Norwich has a vision in which she wonders at all the sins and sorrows of this world. She wonders why God allows the onset of sin and of death. “Why are not all things well?”
And then the answer comes on her vision from the tender words of Jesus: “It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
All manner of things shall be well. And our children shall live. And we continue to walk down the road until our faith becomes sight.
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