Just a Thought - Move On!

“Pick up your pallet and go home” (Mark 2:11, NASB). These are the words of Jesus to the paralytic he has just healed. “Your next step, my friend,” He seems to say, “is to go home—move on. There’s no reason to hang around here.”

When forgiven—and forgiving—“move on” is great advice. When I was teenager, a young girl once said to me, “I believe God has forgiven me, but I don’t know if I can forgive myself.” This is where the scribes had it right when they asked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mark 2:7). We were neither made nor meant to forgive ourselves. Not forgiving ourselves is really just a refusal to recognize the adequacy of God’s forgiveness.

With the paralytic Jesus goes to the heart of the problem—the need for forgiveness—without being asked. It’s a model to emulate. There will always be those folks in our lives who “do us wrong,” but are unaware, or do not believe they have hurt or offended us. They won’t ask for forgiveness, since they don’t sense their need for it. But it won’t be long before we sense our need to forgive them. And the spiritual—and physical—downside of an unwillingness to forgive is not worth the wait for their request.

So it seems, Jesus announces the paralytic’s forgiveness as a fact that is already in place. So we, too, can appropriate in our life God’s forgiveness of our offending brother or sister, whether or not they have asked for it, or chosen to appropriate it in their own.

Then, because we are forgiven—and because we are forgiving—we can MOVE ON!