I Hope I'm Not Sick

Today my four-year-old son asked me about whether Jesus was going to come sometime.  I affirmed that He would, and then he asked me if he was going to come today.  I told him that I didn’t know, and we talked about that for a bit.  Then he said, “I hope I’m not sick.”  When I inquired about what he meant, he responded very firmly, “I don’t want Him to touch me.”  In other words, my son knows that will heal the sick when He comes, and since he thinks he’ll be afraid of him, he hopes he’s not sick on that day and have to get healed by Jesus.  I tried to convince him that he would want Jesus to touch him and that he would change his mind when Jesus came, but he was adamant: “I don’t want Him to touch me.”  He then asked, “When Jesus leaves, can we go back to our home?”  In other words, my son is very content where he is at, and he’s afraid the coming of Jesus might somehow change that for the worse.

               My son’s comments come from a fear of strangers, but I think they are symbolic perhaps of how many of us think.  Jesus invites us all to come unto Him and be healed.  In the New Testament time and time again He healed the people that came unto Him.  He told the Nephites after the destruction that came with His death: “Return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you” (3 Nephi 9:13).  He also told the Nephites about those who had left the faith, “Ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them” (3 Nephi 18:32).  In our dispensation He similarly said, “I, the Lord, will feel after them, and if they harden not their hearts, and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them” (Doctrine and Covenants 112:13).  But often we don’t really want to be healed—we don’t want Jesus to “touch” us or really change anything about us.  We don’t want to leave the comforts of our habits or sins—we want to figuratively stay at home where we are instead of going to Him.  To be healed by the Savior we must let Him change us, and when speaking spiritually that change can be hard.  When the Savior spoke to the man at the pool of Bethesda who had had an infirmity for “thirty and eight years,” Jesus came to Him and said, “Wilt thou be made whole?” (John 5:5-6)  To me the question seemed to say, “Are you finally ready?  Can I now heal you after all these years?”  The man physically couldn’t move to get to the pool of water that was supposed to heal him, and sometimes we are spiritually like that—we spiritually don’t want to move to get the place that will heal us.  He promises, “Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me” (3 Nephi 9:14).  To receive of that mercy we have to come to Him, we have to be willing to change, we have to be willing to let Him touch us.  Instead of pretending that we aren’t sick and don’t need Him, we must recognize that without Him and His touch in our lives, we cannot make it back to our Father.