Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 85 · March 26
Their Faith
“When Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”
Four men broke a hole in somebody's roof, and Mark says that when Jesus looked at what they had done, He saw faith.
This happened in Capernaum. The house was so full that nobody could get near the door, so the four men carrying a man who could not move went up onto the roof. They uncovered it, broke it open, and let him down on his bed into a room they could not get into themselves. "When Jesus saw their faith," Mark says. He could see it, because it had made a hole somebody would have to repair. There are two kinds of reader in this scene.
If you are one of the four, the faith being praised here is the kind you can see from the ground. Nobody asked those men to explain what they believed. They turned up with a stretcher and made a mess to get him to Jesus.
If you are the one on the mat, the only faith the story mentions belongs to the people carrying you. Their faith was enough for that room. Some seasons of life are like that, when all you can do is be carried, and they do not shut you out from Jesus.
Then the gift came, and it was a gift nobody had come for. "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." Four men had gone through a roof to get a pair of working legs, and Jesus started somewhere deeper. He met the need nobody had mentioned, in front of scribes who understood at once what He was claiming: "who can forgive sins but God only?" Then, to show He had that power, He told the man to get up, and the man carried his bed out in front of them all. Whichever person you are in this story, Jesus sees more than you brought to Him, and He meets you there.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 85 is For Such a Time (Esther 4:14).