Jesus didn’t heal everyone.
I imagine there are a multitude of theological explanations for why this is, but I would like to offer a practical one: He didn’t have time.
God Himself exists outside of time, of course. But the Incarnation doesn’t, and Jesus had to measure out his finite human days in sunrises and sunsets and seasons. He had the capacity to heal, but he also had limited daylight, and a score of activities that demanded his attention: healing, yes, but also traveling, and building relationships with His disciples and the people He loved, and teaching, and observing Jewish customs, and likely sundry other activities Scripture reports naught of.
We know that Jesus was aware of time: both of the passage of it, and of “appointed” hours for particular events. He is deliberate about the last Passover with His disciples, the moments and hours leading up to His crucifixion. He resists Mary’s initial request for help at the Cana wedding with the comment: “My time has not yet come.”
Jesus had a sense of divine appointment, knew where He needed to be and when He needed to be there. In a world of many choices, he—like all humans restrained by time and resources—had to make them Himself. We see this especially poignantly when Lazarus is ill, and Jesus makes a deliberate choice to arrive late.
And so the question I find myself asking is this: if Jesus didn’t heal everyone, why do I feel like I should?
A friend and colleague of mine, who is also a pastor, admitted to me lately—sheepishly—that she and her husband have been fighting. “It’s ridiculous,” she began. “Well, no. It’s not, but…”
“But?”
“He’s mad because people call and text all the time! After work, I mean. People from church needing things or wanting to talk, or even people from work calling and wanting to talk, and so I end up on the phone half the night and then he gets mad…”
I couldn’t bring myself to chide her. I’ve done it myself. I do it myself.
I don’t know if it’s a peril unique to Christian women, but I know many Christian women—myself among them—who over-commit, who push themselves too hard, who say “yes” when we ought to say no, who worry that if we don’t no one will.
We pretend it’s fine, of course. We smile and say we’re great, and nod as the phone call stretches into the second hour. We care for bereaved parents and sick family members, tend to children, keep up with our jobs, strive to be there for people who need it…
…and cry, and sometimes break down, and explode over little things, and lose our patience, and martyr ourselves, and get mad that no one appreciates it, and plead to God for help. Because we’re tired. We’re more tired than tired. We are down to our bare bones. We are skittering stress-balls. Like Bilbo Baggins, we feel like butter spread thinly over too much bread.
Recently, I had a meltdown.
It wasn’t over anything significant. In fact, it felt like it was simultaneously about everything and nothing, a clear sign of overwhelm. I was a raging emotional storm, and my bewildered husband watched the squall pass in a mixture of wonder, humor, and mild alarm.
“Hormones,” I explained afterward, embarrassed. But it wasn’t. I’ve watched it happen enough times to know.
And who knows why, in the end? Some of us are people-pleasers. Still others—me—believe that God wants our best, and so we attempt to give the best in every single area of opportunity on the planet and turn our spiritual walk into a perfectionist overachiever’s nightmare. Some of us don’t feel like we matter unless we’re helping someone. Some of us are codependent.
The why is not so critical as the fact that there is a cure. But it’s not what you’d expect.
A lot of well-meaning people will tell you to pray and ask God to give you energy and the resourcefulness you need to do all the things you’re doing. They will quote Bible verses and try to encourage you, and to be fair all of this comes from a really good place.
But it neglects the fact that it might not have been God who told you to do all these things! It might have been you. And the cure is being wiser in your choosing.
I return to the question: if Jesus didn’t heal everyone, why do I feel like I should?
Look: Christ had to make choices. Dinner here meant no dinner there. Healing this person meant that someone or something else was not the center of his attention. Jesus was not accidental. He didn’t commit to everything. Whatever we see of Him in Scripture, it isn’t stress or rush: God knows what He is about. The Incarnation has clear priorities and aims to achieve.
There is room for grace, of course, and people who interrupt him on the road, and women drawing water. There is room for turning water into wine even though the time hasn’t really come. There is always room for more, for generosity and extravagance.
But Jesus is guided by mission and purpose. In the body of a human man, he cannot do all things.
It is nothing more than pride to assume that we can.
“Determine your priorities now,” my mentor often tells me, “or circumstances will determine them for you.”
He’s not wrong. And so I ask God, what do you have for me that’s most important? What are the critical pieces? What are the must-haves?
And then I commit to those.
That doesn’t mean “no” to everything else. It means “maybe.” It means I am a thoughtful and intentional steward of my time and energy. It means that I do my best in the things that matter the most, and then I see what else God grants me room to address. Often, I find that it’s a quite a bit. And I can do it without guilt because I stop saying yes to everything, trying to heal everything and do everything and be everything and fix everything, I have a lot to give. I can be the person I know God wants me to be.
You be you. Let God be God.
We don’t have to do everything.
Samaritan's Song 