There’s something in the human spirit, especially that of a child not yet tainted by the evils of the world, that moves us toward belief.

Evidenced in the coins at the bottom of a fountain; the squeezed eyes wish made right before blowing out the candles; the expectant face of a child turned skyward, straining to see the red of dear Rudolph’s nose flying through Christmas Eve’s night; or the lock fastened to a bridge with a wish that the love represented in the lock will keep the relationship just as surely as that lock is fastened to that bridge.

We want, and so we wish. And for at least a little while, we believe.

It’s inherent to the human spirit to believe. But belief is taught out of us by the experiences of what Reneaut Van Der Viet calls ‘Planet Death’. (That’s here. This one. The one where we live.)

The experiences here on Planet Death slowly, or sometimes far too quickly, teach our belief out of us. Sometimes like the frog in a kettle, slowly, unaware of the warming water around us, we lose our childlike belief. Our ability to believe that a closed eyes wish behind candles may actually come true disappears, quietly, unnoticed, until there comes a day when we really need it and to our great surprise, it’s gone.

Or sometimes, tragically, our belief leaves us suddenly. In a day we wish wouldn’t have happened. Or in a moment that steals more than we knew it could. We suffer a loss greater than we thought we could bear. We face an innocence-ending truth that can’t be taken back or reversed or undone. And poof. Just like that, our belief is gone, if not greatly damaged and forever changed.

Whether fast or slow, life here has a way of grinding down our belief until it’s only barely there, just faint enough to maybe recognize it on a cloudless day. From a mountain. In the summer. With a telescope.

I get that.

Somedays I find myself sitting on that summit straining to find anything like belief in the sky. And if I’m being honest, I’ve spent too much time there, especially lately. But in that wondering – in the squeezing of my eyes behind the telescope – I found myself not comforted and not condemned to a silence but confronted.

I opened my eyes and found myself not on that mountain, searching an empty sky, but sitting beside the pool of Bethesda, among the invalids, surrounded by the evidence of Planet Death. I woke beside the lame and the diseased, coughing into the putrid air in front of me. On my right side, the addict. On my left, the broken. Surrounded by the mentally unwell, the blind, and the deaf. And I, with them. And I, one of them. Wounded and diseased and spotted from my years trodden in this broken world and void of anything that may still resemble belief.

When the waters stirred, they scrambled. All of them believing that the stir could heal them. That the moving waters may hold within them the restoration that would make them walk out of this place.

But I didn’t move. I, along with a few of my more weathered and worn compatriots, didn’t move. I let those with belief move toward the water. I let them throw their penny into the well. I watched as they squeezed their eyes shut to make their wish. Because I believed, somewhere deep inside me, that they may get their healing after all, but I was sure I wouldn’t get mine. Not after all this time. Not after all I know. Not after all I’ve seen. 

The crawl to the water wasn’t worth the effort it would take to get there.

And then a pair of eyes looked into mine. They sparkled with clarity. With a hope that made me angry. Resentful. And they came with a question.

“Do you want to get well?” He asked.

“Do I want to get well?” I scoffed. “Of course, I do!”

“Do you want to get well?” He asked again, softer this time, urging me to really hear Him – to really consider the question before answering it.

The thing is, getting well takes work. It requires from us. It pushes us out of what’s become our normal. Our excuses would no longer be valid. The permissions we give ourselves would no longer be comforting, but taunting. The reliance on whatever it is we use to cope would start to harm us and cause anxiety and discontentment instead of soothing us away from reality. Getting well disallows secondary gain. The pain we experience is real, our conditions are real, the circumstances are real – those things can’t be ignored. But if we allow it, our diseases begin to become a part of our identities. Our reliance on our own woundedness becomes so much a part of our lives and relationships that we can’t define ourselves apart from them. They have an influence or impact on every interaction we have in a day. We have a life system formed around our diseases and we find somehow, a comfort in our problems.

And so, He asked again.

“Do you want to get well?”

Do you want to believe?

Do you want to turn your face toward the sun and know the truth that you were created with a purpose to do something only you can do?

Do you want to believe that your minutes spent here on Planet Death mean something that no one else’s minutes can mean?

Do you want to move past your own personal hurt, tragedy, and blindness and use every ounce of your woundedness to help heal a brother or sister or friend?

Do you want to use your experience, broken as it may be, to become the best version of yourself you have ever been? More able to deal with hard things? More able to love with empathy? More able to communicate effectively? More able to be proud of who you’ve become and what you’ve done with what you’ve been given?

“Do you want to get well?”

When I opened my eyes again I was back on the mountain. Back in the place of looking into the cloudless sky with a telescope. No longer surrounded by the diseases of Bethesda but instead surrounded by the things of this life. The serene song of the morning bird, the breeze, the grass – back to the present. (Perhaps the most important hour of every day; every week; every life.)

And back in the present, I was reminded of Naaman.

When Naaman asked Elisha to heal his leprosy, Elisha told him to go bathe in the Jordan, but Naaman said no. It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t awe-inspiring. It wasn’t applause-worthy.

“Sir,” Naaman’s officers pleaded with him, “if he had told you to do something very difficult, wouldn’t you have done it?” (2 Kings 5:13)

Yes, of course he would have. He was a great military commander, known for his heroic acts. He was accustomed to greatness. His healing would also have to come from an act of greatness.

But here in the present, on Planet Death, I think healing comes more like the morning bird’s song. It’s quiet. It doesn’t overpower the moment. It’s ever present if we have the ears to hear it, and its beauty is unmatched if only we can settle our souls enough to enjoy it.

But it won’t pursue us – we must pursue it. We must choose it.

Not in a goosebump-raising, earth-shaking storyline kind of way, but in what Oswald Chambers calls, the daily drudgery. The dirty little doing of the thing. The unapplauded, unseen, unremarkable way of the Kingdom. Quiet, but intentional. Royal, but last through the door. Holy, and on its knees, wiping dirt from the feet of an enemy.

Get thee to the river. There’s healing to be had. There’s work to be done. Let’s go. I’ll meet you there. 

love, nic