The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; He will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord, and He will respond to their pleas and heal them.
This reminds me of the scene in Peace Like a River where the father in the book who works as a janitor slaps a pock-faced principal who has just fired him and the slap heals his face. Peace Like a River is a book filled with miracles and I thought at the time this holy slap was an interesting translation of spitting in someone's eye or having someone tip in a muddy bit of water [some of Jesus' techniques].
We need a slap or a good kick in the pants, I'm afraid and I am afraid of it. And we focus on that slap - the pain of it, the justice of it, whether one is slapped harder than another and the fairness in that, and why a loving God would slap us to begin with. We fixate on the slap but ignore the healing. I know this is easy to write while not in the midst of a slap [that I'm aware of]. Terrible things befall good people and it's not always because they need a good slap.
Then I think of the slaps with hands and reeds and whips that Christ received. And we received the healing.
Lord knows.
No comments:
Post a Comment