Now but not yet

I saw a link on a web feed that said: "Jesus helps a woman with a "Personality Disorder". Now I don't want to disrespect what Jesus has done for this lady, praise God for any healing she has received, but it did make me smile as I thought to myself, "given some of the Christians I've met over the years, this hardly sounds like headline news!"

On a serious note it also reminded me of my friend Keith. He died at a young age from complications that arose when his appendix ruptured. He refused treatment from a lady doctor because he was a man and she was a woman and that didn't seem right to him. He took his Bible very literally and once told my wife that if she wanted to work she should sell cloth because that was what Lydia did.

Keith was a bright, intelligent young man who had gone to university but who dropped out when his schizophrenia began to surface. I don't know enough about the condition, but apparently someone spiked a drink with a drug of some sort and that either precipitated his illness or exacerbated an underlying condition. Irrespective of his condition, Keith's faith was deep and personal. If you looked closely, and past his illness and the effect it had on his personality, you could often see the inner struggle he faced, you could almost see the battle raging in his mind.

The great thing about our faith is surely this: one day I will see Keith again. He will be sitting somewhere in heaven, maybe under a shady tree, and he will be at peace. His mind will be clear and the battle will be over. Jesus will have set him free, totally free from everything that held him captive through those difficult years. During his life-time he never experienced the full release and healing that might have been, but now he has.

Maybe that's the deeper message of these two stories. Some people get to be healed now and enjoy the blessing of that experience of the power of the kingdom, others wait. In the end though, everyone who trusts God will experience it one side of heaven or the other.