By Sidharth Mohandas

Mark 2:1-5

“A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that He had come home. So many gathered that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and He preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to Him a paralytic, carried by four of them. Since they could not get to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus, after digging through it, lowered the mat the paralyzed man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

I marvel at the determination of the four men to reach Jesus and would love to talk on that, but today I draw your attention to the man whom they carried. We don’t know how long he was a paralytic; we don’t know if the four that carried him was in any way related to him, we don’t even know who this man was or where he came from. All that we know is that he was a paralytic. He was known by his problem. How horrible! But when Jesus saw the paralytic He saw the person and not his problem…He said, “SON, your sins are forgiven…” In the world today we have people address others by their problem- “oh he’s a drunkard!”, “that guy is an AIDs victim”, “eww…she’s a homosexual”, “he’s a heart patient”, “he’s a liar”, “she’s a prostitute”…Do you see how we are so accustomed to looking at the problem rather than the person who is afflicted with the problem?

I remember telling a girl who was being treated badly by her dad- “Your dad is a person, he is not the problem. The problem is that he lacks Jesus”. Can we make the decision today to look beyond the problem into the person? Probably, you have someone in your life that always keeps finding fault with you, and keeps on nagging you. Will you choose to see the person and not his/her fault? Pray for the person and love the person unconditionally. I know that could be hard, but it’s not impossible because God says you can do it.