The Lesser of the Two Miracles

Is it easier to forgive the sins of a person or to heal their body?

Michael Murray
Nobody Left Out
Published in
6 min readJan 30, 2021

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Looking down on rooftops.
Photo by Matthew Harris on Unsplash

While [Jesus] was preaching God’s word to them, four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus. (Mark 2:2–4, NLT)

It was the scheme of a lifetime.

The four men — lifelong buddies — got word that Jesus was back in Capernaum. They had heard about all the amazing things Jesus had done. He was freeing people of diseases. A feverish woman hopped out of bed and started running around the kitchen. Jesus was somehow making sick people whole.

The four men told their friend about Jesus. He was skeptical, to say the least. He had been paralyzed for many years, and no doctor was able to offer him an ounce of hope. He would almost rather resign himself to this fate than dream about a different life. Hope is a dangerous thing when you’ve been disappointed so many times.

Still, his friends insisted they bring him to Jesus, and there wasn’t much he could do to stop them. So they picked him up, mat and all, and ran as fast as they could toward Capernaum. They heard Jesus was staying at some fisherman’s house. But by the…

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Michael Murray
Nobody Left Out

Just a broken, messy guy trying to follow Jesus one shaky step at a time. Get my free 5-day devotional here ➜ https://www.subscribepage.com/nobodyleftoutmedium.