HELP MY UNBELIEF
A meditation on Mark 9:14-29
When they came to the disciples, they saw a great crowd around them, and some scribes arguing with them. 15When the whole crowd saw him, they were immediately overcome with awe, and they ran forward to greet him. 16He asked them, ‘What are you arguing about with them?’ 17Someone from the crowd answered him, ‘Teacher, I brought you my son; he has a spirit that makes him unable to speak; 18and whenever it seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid; and I asked your disciples to cast it out, but they could not do so.’ 19He answered them, ‘You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.’ 20And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it threw the boy into convulsions, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. 21Jesus asked the father, ‘How long has this been happening to him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. 22It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ 23Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.’ 24Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ 25When Jesus saw that a crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, ‘You spirit that keep this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!’ 26After crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’ 27But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he was able to stand. 28When he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ 29He said to them, ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’
INTRODCUTION
‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ I have always been drawn to this father’s poignant prayer; probably because it gave me permission to cry it out myself—often! It’s my go-to prayer when, despite my prayers and efforts, nothing changes and, like the father in this story, I’ve felt helpless, and like the boy, I’ve felt out of control, even unable to speak. The default mode is a plunge into the despair of unbelief.
If you can identify with this struggle to believe, this story about a father and his son is for you because it’s a story about the struggle with belief and unbelief; about despair and helplessness, and what Jesus said we can do about it.
THREE CONVERSATIONS
This story immediately follows Jesus’ descent with Peter, James and John from the Mt of Transfiguration. They returned to the remaining nine disciples and saw them in argument with ‘some scribes.’ This is the first of three conversations in this story and the only one we’re not privy to, which means it’s not important as far as Mark is concerned. While we could speculate what they were arguing about, based on other occasions when scribes confronted Jesus (read my saga, ‘Binding the Strong Man’ on Mark 3:20-35), it will, no doubt, lead us astray and we’ll avoid the lesson on the struggle with belief and unbelief.
The third conversation is a private and brief one between Jesus and his disciples. Since it’s critical in the story and for our lives today, we will reflect on it. However, I want to begin with the second conversation, the one between Jesus and the boy’s father. It’s the longest and most detailed, ending with the father’s poignant plea, ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief’ (KJV). There is, by the way, no conversation between Jesus and the unclean spirit in the boy, unlike in other exorcism stories in Mark’s Gospel (see Mark 5).
The conversation between Jesus and the boy’s father
The conversation with the father is one in which the father speaks considerably more than Jesus. He describes, in detail his son’s condition, giving two different descriptions. There is a third description given when the spirit takes over the boy in front of Jesus and Mark notes what happened. That we get three descriptions of the boy seems important. Reading them we can’t help but sympathize with this father and understand his sense of helplessness and his struggle to believe anything would ever really change for his son. He’d already asked the disciples to cast it out and they could not do so. Would Jesus be able to? He doesn’t know, and his son’s condition kept getting worse. According to the father, the spirit basically did three things to the boy. First, it made him ‘unable to speak.’ This sounds like the boy had the ability to speak but was prevented from doing so whenever the unclean spirit seized him. Second, it took away his control and power over his physical behavior. And, third, it often tried to destroy him by throwing him into the fire and the water.
Some of us can identify with some of these symptoms. I don’t mean we’ve been under the influence of an evil spirit, but we’ve been in experiences where we were ‘made unable to speak,’ either because we weren’t given an opportunity to do so or because our words were ignored. This happens a lot to women, so we can identify with this symptom. Many of us have felt out of control in some situation, be that at work or at home, and felt helpless and frantic. And, like the father we plead: ‘if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ And the if is an if of doubt. Lord, if you can, but I’m not sure you can or will help! And our unbelief becomes despair as we wonder whether anything will ever really change.
Between the conversations
I’ll come back to Jesus and the father, but for now, I’m jumping to Jesus’ successful and intriguing intervention. He rebuked the spirit, saying, ‘You spirit that keep this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!’
Did you notice what Jesus added to the father’s description of his son? The father said the boy was made unable to speak. He said nothing about being made unable to hear. Jesus accused the spirit of doing both to the boy. I find this intriguing. It suggests that his words aren’t merely about what the unclean spirit did to the boy, but about his disciples. In fact, I think the story of the exorcism of the unclean spirit can be looked at as a sort of parable, an acted-out parable, to help the disciples with their understanding of Jesus and his mission. They were struggling to believe Jesus’ own words about this. Just go back and read the previous chapter (especially 8:31-33), where Jesus spoke plainly about his suffering, death and resurrection and Peter rebuked him! This wasn’t supposed to happen to their Messiah. Neither he, nor the other disciples got it. They stuck to their, mostly false, opinions about Messiah’s identity and mission. In other words, they remained deaf to Jesus’ teaching and thus they were as good as unable to speak, especially about Jesus. They were indeed, as Jesus lamented, a ‘faithless generation.’
Sadly, I’m not so sure that Jesus’ lament about that faithless generation isn’t still appropriate for the church of Jesus Christ today. There seems to be a spirit that makes some of us deaf to the truth and unable to speak it, especially when it comes to hearing and speaking about Jesus. Their descriptions of Jesus are too often based on emotions, personal desires, secular culture, popular preachers and authors rather than in Scripture. And if you try and point out to them, as I have tried to do, that their picture isn’t true to the Gospels’ account of Jesus, they shrug their shoulders and cling to their false view. As a result, many people who claim to be Christians, are living a story dictated, not by the gospel of Jesus, a gospel of reconciliation not division, of love not the fearfulness that leads to hatred and violence, of truth not lies and distortions, but on a story dictated by the polarization and divisiveness, fear and hatred, lies and distortions of our present political climate. As Richard Rohr warns, “If we walk around with hatred all day, morally we’re just as much killers as the one who pulls the trigger. We can’t live that way and not be destroyed from within. Yet, for some reason, many Christians have thought it acceptable to think and feel hatred, negativity, and fear” (Daily Devotion for Oct 30, 2018). Like those first disciples many of us need to have that spirit that keeps us from hearing and speaking truth, that controls us with fear and hatred, cast out.
When Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to depart, it didn’t do so willingly. Unclean spirits never come out willingly. This one convulsed the boy terribly leaving him “like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’” Jesus took him by the hand (he delighted in the personal physical touch), raised the boy and he was able to stand, on his own. Jesus restored his life, gave back control over his actions and returned his power to speak and hear clearly. Do you get the message? It’s given in rich symbolism to get the attention of disciples who fail to hear and therefore fail to believe what Jesus says.
The obvious image is the parallel with Jesus’ life. Evil powers (the political and religious rulers in Jerusalem where Jesus was headed) would take control of his life, just as the spirit controlled the boy’s life. They would leave Jesus ‘like a corpse’ and everyone would assume he was dead. But, just as Jesus raised the boy and let him stand, so too Jesus would rise again in fullness of life. This is what he’d already told his disciples and would repeatedly tell them before it happened. Here he tells it in dramatic picture form. But the disciples rejected his words and failed to get the message of the drama before them. That’s the obvious message and one we today know well; we read it often in the Gospels. There’s a less obvious message that Mark directs to us readers today, a hint of assurance for us who struggle with unbelief. Just as Jesus took control over the unclean spirit that kept the boy from hearing and speaking the truth, so too will he take control over whatever ‘spirit’ it is that hinders us, the spirit that stokes the fire of our struggle to believe leaving us feeling helpless and in the despair of unbelief. Jesus still has the power to raise us up, restore us to wholeness, to open our ears and loosen our tongues and strengthen our faith. In our struggle and lifeless situations, he will restore life and set us free.
The conversation between Jesus and the disciples
The story ends with something of an anticlimax. Jesus entered the house, leaving behind the crowds and the drama of the healing, and engaged in a private conversation with his disciples, the final one in the story. In the safety of privacy, the disciples ask, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ Jesus’ answer is simple and brief: ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’
Many of us assumed that ‘this kind’ applies narrowly to casting out demons and nothing more. And, since most of us will never be called upon to cast out a demon, we tend to gloss over this verse and ignore Jesus’ teaching. But, this story has a larger purpose than merely demonstrating Jesus’ power to cast out an unclean spirit. It’s a story about the struggle with belief and unbelief and what we can do about that. Which brings us back to Jesus’ conversation with the father of the boy. He begs Jesus, ‘if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ Jesus responded with an apparent rebuke, ‘If you are able! —All things can be done for the one who believes.’ Yet, to the disciples Jesus urged them to pray, not believe more. It suggests that Jesus has linked prayer and belief, both of which are easily misunderstood.
For instance, I know many people who hear Jesus’ words to the father and assume that all things literally means all things, which often means the stuff they want and boldly ask (pray) God for, be that a better job, more money, healing for a loved one or a nation. And when they don’t get what they prayed for, they presume their faith (another word for belief) was lacking. However, I don’t think Jesus intended us to think we can pray for whatever we want and, so long as we believe, God will give it to us. I mean, the mountain of leaves I’m raking up this Fall will never turn into dollar bills, no matter how perfect my belief in God’s ability to do that! Belief has more to do with who, than what we believe. We believe God, all that God is. Mitzi Minor, in The Spirituality of Mark, suggests Jesus calls us to a “hopeful anticipation based on who God is—One who can do all things necessary for accomplishing God’s will for setting people free for the life God intended for them” (1996, p. 82; emphasis mine). This means that we need to let go control of our lives, our families, our children, and trust (rest in) Jesus to do what is necessary for setting us free to live his Way, doing God’s will.
The prayer, ‘I believe; help my unbelief,’ isn’t asking God to give us greater certainty about what God can to do but is a humble willingness to let go the controls and rest fully in God. This is something we all, if we’re honest to admit to it, struggle with. How can we deepen our belief, our trust in God to work out everything according to God’s plan not ours or somebody else’s? What is the solution to our struggle to believe and to resist falling into despair and hopelessness? Jesus’ answer is simple: ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’ In other words, we ‘battle’ our despair that anything will ever really change, not by conjuring up more belief, but only through prayer. The ‘spirit’ that cripples our faith will only come out through prayer. “To pray,” writes Ched Myers, “is to learn to believe in a transformation of self and world, which seems, empirically, impossible” (Binding the Strong Man. 2015, p. 255). Through prayer, broadly understood as a relationship with God, we seek to resist the temptation to fall back into despair that crushes our hope in Jesus and his good plan. This doesn’t mean that the situation we’re praying about will necessarily change. It may not, at least not immediately. It does mean that the one who prays will be transformed. Their trust in God, their belief that God is still in control and moving the world to the fulfillment of his plan for it, will keep deepening.
CONCLUSION
‘Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief!’ To those of us who struggle with the despair of unbelief, Jesus’ words to us are, ‘Keep praying. Keep praying until you yourself have been transformed, until the spirit that keeps you from hearing and speaking the truth comes out and your life is renewed. Keep praying until you can claim with the prophet Isaiah, ‘The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word…. The LORD God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious…. The LORD God helps me’ (Is 50:4-7). The spirit that keeps us from speaking will come out, our tongues will be set free to speak the truth about Jesus in ways that are healing. The spirit that keeps us from hearing will come out and our ears will be opened to hear the truth and keep us from being rebellious, trying to fix our world out ways. The Lord God will help us, even to believe (trust).
‘This kind [the kind that makes us deaf and mute and leads to the despair of unbelief] can come out only through prayer.’
A Brief Note
It is popular today to argue that the ‘unclean spirit’ was really epilepsy and therefore there never was an exorcism. In fact, Matthew’s much briefer version of this story does suggest epilepsy. The father tells Jesus his son ‘is an epileptic and he suffers terribly’ (Mt 17:15). The King James describes him as ‘a lunatic and sore vexed’! However, Matthew also states that Jesus rebuked ‘the demon.’ The symptoms of the boy are certainly very similar to epilepsy and it would have been common in that day to attribute this to a demon. However, getting stuck on arguing about this loses what Mark is trying to do. He, no doubt, deliberately used the language of ‘spirit’ in order to get across the underlying message. For a moment, forget the historical issues and imagine the story as a kind of parable. What great truth does it teach us? That’s what I’ve tried to do in my meditation.
Jackie L. Smallbones
October 2018©
You are welcome to copy this, but please let me know first.
INTRODCUTION
‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ I have always been drawn to this father’s poignant prayer; probably because it gave me permission to cry it out myself—often! It’s my go-to prayer when, despite my prayers and efforts, nothing changes and, like the father in this story, I’ve felt helpless, and like the boy, I’ve felt out of control, even unable to speak. The default mode is a plunge into the despair of unbelief.
If you can identify with this struggle to believe, this story about a father and his son is for you because it’s a story about the struggle with belief and unbelief; about despair and helplessness, and what Jesus said we can do about it.
THREE CONVERSATIONS
This story immediately follows Jesus’ descent with Peter, James and John from the Mt of Transfiguration. They returned to the remaining nine disciples and saw them in argument with ‘some scribes.’ This is the first of three conversations in this story and the only one we’re not privy to, which means it’s not important as far as Mark is concerned. While we could speculate what they were arguing about, based on other occasions when scribes confronted Jesus (read my saga, ‘Binding the Strong Man’ on Mark 3:20-35), it will, no doubt, lead us astray and we’ll avoid the lesson on the struggle with belief and unbelief.
The third conversation is a private and brief one between Jesus and his disciples. Since it’s critical in the story and for our lives today, we will reflect on it. However, I want to begin with the second conversation, the one between Jesus and the boy’s father. It’s the longest and most detailed, ending with the father’s poignant plea, ‘Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief’ (KJV). There is, by the way, no conversation between Jesus and the unclean spirit in the boy, unlike in other exorcism stories in Mark’s Gospel (see Mark 5).
The conversation between Jesus and the boy’s father
The conversation with the father is one in which the father speaks considerably more than Jesus. He describes, in detail his son’s condition, giving two different descriptions. There is a third description given when the spirit takes over the boy in front of Jesus and Mark notes what happened. That we get three descriptions of the boy seems important. Reading them we can’t help but sympathize with this father and understand his sense of helplessness and his struggle to believe anything would ever really change for his son. He’d already asked the disciples to cast it out and they could not do so. Would Jesus be able to? He doesn’t know, and his son’s condition kept getting worse. According to the father, the spirit basically did three things to the boy. First, it made him ‘unable to speak.’ This sounds like the boy had the ability to speak but was prevented from doing so whenever the unclean spirit seized him. Second, it took away his control and power over his physical behavior. And, third, it often tried to destroy him by throwing him into the fire and the water.
Some of us can identify with some of these symptoms. I don’t mean we’ve been under the influence of an evil spirit, but we’ve been in experiences where we were ‘made unable to speak,’ either because we weren’t given an opportunity to do so or because our words were ignored. This happens a lot to women, so we can identify with this symptom. Many of us have felt out of control in some situation, be that at work or at home, and felt helpless and frantic. And, like the father we plead: ‘if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ And the if is an if of doubt. Lord, if you can, but I’m not sure you can or will help! And our unbelief becomes despair as we wonder whether anything will ever really change.
Between the conversations
I’ll come back to Jesus and the father, but for now, I’m jumping to Jesus’ successful and intriguing intervention. He rebuked the spirit, saying, ‘You spirit that keep this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!’
Did you notice what Jesus added to the father’s description of his son? The father said the boy was made unable to speak. He said nothing about being made unable to hear. Jesus accused the spirit of doing both to the boy. I find this intriguing. It suggests that his words aren’t merely about what the unclean spirit did to the boy, but about his disciples. In fact, I think the story of the exorcism of the unclean spirit can be looked at as a sort of parable, an acted-out parable, to help the disciples with their understanding of Jesus and his mission. They were struggling to believe Jesus’ own words about this. Just go back and read the previous chapter (especially 8:31-33), where Jesus spoke plainly about his suffering, death and resurrection and Peter rebuked him! This wasn’t supposed to happen to their Messiah. Neither he, nor the other disciples got it. They stuck to their, mostly false, opinions about Messiah’s identity and mission. In other words, they remained deaf to Jesus’ teaching and thus they were as good as unable to speak, especially about Jesus. They were indeed, as Jesus lamented, a ‘faithless generation.’
Sadly, I’m not so sure that Jesus’ lament about that faithless generation isn’t still appropriate for the church of Jesus Christ today. There seems to be a spirit that makes some of us deaf to the truth and unable to speak it, especially when it comes to hearing and speaking about Jesus. Their descriptions of Jesus are too often based on emotions, personal desires, secular culture, popular preachers and authors rather than in Scripture. And if you try and point out to them, as I have tried to do, that their picture isn’t true to the Gospels’ account of Jesus, they shrug their shoulders and cling to their false view. As a result, many people who claim to be Christians, are living a story dictated, not by the gospel of Jesus, a gospel of reconciliation not division, of love not the fearfulness that leads to hatred and violence, of truth not lies and distortions, but on a story dictated by the polarization and divisiveness, fear and hatred, lies and distortions of our present political climate. As Richard Rohr warns, “If we walk around with hatred all day, morally we’re just as much killers as the one who pulls the trigger. We can’t live that way and not be destroyed from within. Yet, for some reason, many Christians have thought it acceptable to think and feel hatred, negativity, and fear” (Daily Devotion for Oct 30, 2018). Like those first disciples many of us need to have that spirit that keeps us from hearing and speaking truth, that controls us with fear and hatred, cast out.
When Jesus commanded the unclean spirit to depart, it didn’t do so willingly. Unclean spirits never come out willingly. This one convulsed the boy terribly leaving him “like a corpse, so that most of them said, ‘He is dead.’” Jesus took him by the hand (he delighted in the personal physical touch), raised the boy and he was able to stand, on his own. Jesus restored his life, gave back control over his actions and returned his power to speak and hear clearly. Do you get the message? It’s given in rich symbolism to get the attention of disciples who fail to hear and therefore fail to believe what Jesus says.
The obvious image is the parallel with Jesus’ life. Evil powers (the political and religious rulers in Jerusalem where Jesus was headed) would take control of his life, just as the spirit controlled the boy’s life. They would leave Jesus ‘like a corpse’ and everyone would assume he was dead. But, just as Jesus raised the boy and let him stand, so too Jesus would rise again in fullness of life. This is what he’d already told his disciples and would repeatedly tell them before it happened. Here he tells it in dramatic picture form. But the disciples rejected his words and failed to get the message of the drama before them. That’s the obvious message and one we today know well; we read it often in the Gospels. There’s a less obvious message that Mark directs to us readers today, a hint of assurance for us who struggle with unbelief. Just as Jesus took control over the unclean spirit that kept the boy from hearing and speaking the truth, so too will he take control over whatever ‘spirit’ it is that hinders us, the spirit that stokes the fire of our struggle to believe leaving us feeling helpless and in the despair of unbelief. Jesus still has the power to raise us up, restore us to wholeness, to open our ears and loosen our tongues and strengthen our faith. In our struggle and lifeless situations, he will restore life and set us free.
The conversation between Jesus and the disciples
The story ends with something of an anticlimax. Jesus entered the house, leaving behind the crowds and the drama of the healing, and engaged in a private conversation with his disciples, the final one in the story. In the safety of privacy, the disciples ask, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’ Jesus’ answer is simple and brief: ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’
Many of us assumed that ‘this kind’ applies narrowly to casting out demons and nothing more. And, since most of us will never be called upon to cast out a demon, we tend to gloss over this verse and ignore Jesus’ teaching. But, this story has a larger purpose than merely demonstrating Jesus’ power to cast out an unclean spirit. It’s a story about the struggle with belief and unbelief and what we can do about that. Which brings us back to Jesus’ conversation with the father of the boy. He begs Jesus, ‘if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ Jesus responded with an apparent rebuke, ‘If you are able! —All things can be done for the one who believes.’ Yet, to the disciples Jesus urged them to pray, not believe more. It suggests that Jesus has linked prayer and belief, both of which are easily misunderstood.
For instance, I know many people who hear Jesus’ words to the father and assume that all things literally means all things, which often means the stuff they want and boldly ask (pray) God for, be that a better job, more money, healing for a loved one or a nation. And when they don’t get what they prayed for, they presume their faith (another word for belief) was lacking. However, I don’t think Jesus intended us to think we can pray for whatever we want and, so long as we believe, God will give it to us. I mean, the mountain of leaves I’m raking up this Fall will never turn into dollar bills, no matter how perfect my belief in God’s ability to do that! Belief has more to do with who, than what we believe. We believe God, all that God is. Mitzi Minor, in The Spirituality of Mark, suggests Jesus calls us to a “hopeful anticipation based on who God is—One who can do all things necessary for accomplishing God’s will for setting people free for the life God intended for them” (1996, p. 82; emphasis mine). This means that we need to let go control of our lives, our families, our children, and trust (rest in) Jesus to do what is necessary for setting us free to live his Way, doing God’s will.
The prayer, ‘I believe; help my unbelief,’ isn’t asking God to give us greater certainty about what God can to do but is a humble willingness to let go the controls and rest fully in God. This is something we all, if we’re honest to admit to it, struggle with. How can we deepen our belief, our trust in God to work out everything according to God’s plan not ours or somebody else’s? What is the solution to our struggle to believe and to resist falling into despair and hopelessness? Jesus’ answer is simple: ‘This kind can come out only through prayer.’ In other words, we ‘battle’ our despair that anything will ever really change, not by conjuring up more belief, but only through prayer. The ‘spirit’ that cripples our faith will only come out through prayer. “To pray,” writes Ched Myers, “is to learn to believe in a transformation of self and world, which seems, empirically, impossible” (Binding the Strong Man. 2015, p. 255). Through prayer, broadly understood as a relationship with God, we seek to resist the temptation to fall back into despair that crushes our hope in Jesus and his good plan. This doesn’t mean that the situation we’re praying about will necessarily change. It may not, at least not immediately. It does mean that the one who prays will be transformed. Their trust in God, their belief that God is still in control and moving the world to the fulfillment of his plan for it, will keep deepening.
CONCLUSION
‘Lord I believe, help thou my unbelief!’ To those of us who struggle with the despair of unbelief, Jesus’ words to us are, ‘Keep praying. Keep praying until you yourself have been transformed, until the spirit that keeps you from hearing and speaking the truth comes out and your life is renewed. Keep praying until you can claim with the prophet Isaiah, ‘The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word…. The LORD God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious…. The LORD God helps me’ (Is 50:4-7). The spirit that keeps us from speaking will come out, our tongues will be set free to speak the truth about Jesus in ways that are healing. The spirit that keeps us from hearing will come out and our ears will be opened to hear the truth and keep us from being rebellious, trying to fix our world out ways. The Lord God will help us, even to believe (trust).
‘This kind [the kind that makes us deaf and mute and leads to the despair of unbelief] can come out only through prayer.’
A Brief Note
It is popular today to argue that the ‘unclean spirit’ was really epilepsy and therefore there never was an exorcism. In fact, Matthew’s much briefer version of this story does suggest epilepsy. The father tells Jesus his son ‘is an epileptic and he suffers terribly’ (Mt 17:15). The King James describes him as ‘a lunatic and sore vexed’! However, Matthew also states that Jesus rebuked ‘the demon.’ The symptoms of the boy are certainly very similar to epilepsy and it would have been common in that day to attribute this to a demon. However, getting stuck on arguing about this loses what Mark is trying to do. He, no doubt, deliberately used the language of ‘spirit’ in order to get across the underlying message. For a moment, forget the historical issues and imagine the story as a kind of parable. What great truth does it teach us? That’s what I’ve tried to do in my meditation.
Jackie L. Smallbones
October 2018©
You are welcome to copy this, but please let me know first.
