Vs. 14 As Jesus was going into
a village, ten men who had leprosy met Him. They stood
at a distance and called out in
a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

No amount of comfort could stop the little girl’s crying.   She was in great pain and too young to understand why.  Her mother knew the only thing to do was pray and trust God with her little girl’s life.

Has there ever been a time in your life, when the only things to do were pray and trust God? In light of the events of September 11th and subsequent events, bomb scares, anthrax scares, and threats from Osama Bin Laden, this may be a foolish question to ask.   It seems people have turned and are turning to God and their faith more than before.

We are like the ten lepers who met Jesus and cried out to Him,

“Jesus, Master,
have mercy on us!”

The New International Version of the Bible uses the word “pity” instead of mercy.  Pity suggests to me that the lepers were asking Jesus to feel sorry for them, to commiserate with them or to sympathize with them.  In fact they wanted more than that.  They wanted Jesus to heal them.

The mother in the opening story stayed by her daughter’s bedside and prayed through the night.  She was not asking God for His sympathy, she was asking God to heal her daughter.  In light of current events we want God to feel more than sorry for us.  We want him to act.  We want God to do for us what he did for the Israelites.

Psalm 66 gives a glimpse of what God did.

Vs. 5 Come and see what God has done, how awesome His works in man’s behalf!  He turned the sea into dry land; they passed through the waters on foot.

Vs. 7 He rules forever by His power, His eyes watch the nations.

Vs. 9 He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping.

Vs. 10 For you, O God tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but You brought us to a place of abundance.

God answered their prayer for mercy with deliverance.  Jesus answered the lepers appeal, “Have mercy on us!” by telling them,

“Go, show yourselves
to the priest.”

Jesus’ response may sound strange to you and me.  It may even sound merciless.  They are asking for mercy and Jesus tells them to go see the priest.  Actually Jesus’ response is not unusual.  Going to the priest to be declared clean was customary.  Law required that if leprosy went into remission the leper had to present himself to the priest and be declared clean.

What is unusual about Jesus’ command to,

“Go show yourselves
to the priest”

is that Jesus told them to go to the priest without healing them. What is amazing is that the ten lepers did what Jesus told them.  There is no record of them questioning Jesus.  No record of hesitation. They simply turned around and headed for the priest.  In other words they trusted God without even seeing the evidence.

The mother, who spent the night praying at her three-year-old daughter’s bedside, saw no evidence of her daughter getting better, aside from the fact that she had become silent.  When the doctors returned the next morning they expected to find that she had died during the night.  To their surprise, she was peacefully sleeping.  Slightly encouraged they told the mother her daughter’s chances were 50-50. They also said that if she did survive she would by mentally retarded and physically handicapped.  The mother looked at her doctors with a slight smile and continued to pray.  She knew that if God had brought her daughter out of death that He had much more for her in life.

Is your trust in God so strong that you act even before you see evidence?

“Go show yourselves
to the priest.”

And as they went, they were cleansed.  One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice.  He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him - and he was a Samaritan.

The very idea that a Samaritan would receive help from Jesus would have been shocking, but a Samaritan who was a leper.  People in either category were written off.  Jesus doesn’t write anyone off.   Jesus ministers to any one who reaches out to Him.  This is evident in the leper. It is evident in the three-year-old girl for she grew up and won a gold medal in the '68 Olympics and a silver medal in the '72 Olympics.  Her name is Madeline Manning Mims.

The uncertainty of today requires you and I to have faith like that of the ten lepers and the mother of Madeline Manning.  Faith requires us to act without seeing evidence.  Faith requires us to know that out of trial comes glory, out of death comes resurrection.  Faith requires us to believe Paul’s words to the Romans.  Suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character produces hope.  And hope doesn’t disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us (Romans 5:3-5).  Faith requires us to ask and to follow trusting that God will be merciful.