Not a creature was stirring....

Not even a cafe.

April and Kelly Crull have been staying with me in my apartment for the last week, and it has been so much fun. Kelly, unfortunately, has had to work a bit from his computer (luckily I have wireless) to finish a project that he's working on for another church that's part of Christian Associates. After hours and hours of web design stuff that I don't understand, he finished today, two days ahead of his deadline.

So we decided that before going to a New Year's party tonight, we would go out for something to drink to celebrate. Plus, April wanted a coffee.

I'm not really exaggerating to say that in my neighborhood, probably one out of every 5 doorways on the street leads to a place that serves food, drinks, coffee, etc. People come to my neighborhood to go out. It was 7 o'clock, and living a 10 or 12 minute walk from the absolute center of town, I expected my street to be hopping when I walked outside.

But this was not the case. Instead, we walked outside to an eerie quiet. Windows were dark and doors were locked. We decided to walk to a nearby plaza that has cute pubs and coffee shops for our little celebration. Again, no luck. A couple of groups of kids were clumped together. A couple old men walked their dogs. I might have imagined a tumbleweed blowing across the bricks of the plaza.

On up the street, a few blocks later, we finally found an open pub and went inside, only for April to find that they didn't have any coffee left. Nevermind the fact that a man sitting at the bar was sipping his own coffee and the espresso machine was visible behind the counter. Evidently he had decided he had made his last for the night. Since Kelly and I had already ordered, we finished up there and about 20 minutes later went on to find another place so April could get her coffee.

By this time we had circled around to Bilbao (the next metro stop up on the light blue line), so we crossed over to Cafe Comercial, a very well known cafe in Madrid. From the windows, the crowd at the bar looked promising. But as we tried to pass through the door that separated the bar from the tables, the bartender stopped us dead in our tracks. "Esta cerrado." (It's closed). One of the better known cafes in Madrid had closed down 90 percent of its space.

If you are in the States and reading this, you're probably scratching your head right now and thinking "What's so wierd about that?" But this is Madrid at seven p.m. This is WHEN people go out for coffee! Supper isn't until eight at the earliest! And besides, Madrid is the loudest city in Europe, and my neighborhood is one of the loudest in Madrid! And IT'S STINKING NEW YEAR'S EVE! Where is everybody?

We left bewildered and walked back home through dark streets past locked doors. The only things open were alimentaciones (like a convenience store) as far as we could see. At least this was in our favor, since we still needed to buy drinks to take to the party. In the distance, we saw lights reflecting against the clouds above Sol (the center), and it comforted me to know that at least someone else was alive.

I've heard that in Spain the party doesn't really start until after midnight, but I had no idea that that meant the town was required to hibernate until then!

I'm leaving in half an hour to go to a party (an early one), so I'll post again tonight or tomorrow on Madrid after midnight.

El Fontanero

I'm learning all sorts of new words today.

Tuberia=pipes
Fontanero=plumber
And many expletives that i'm not going to repeat or translate.

There's a plumber in my bathroom who thinks it's the funniest thing in the world that chicken and kitchen sound so similar in English. He is currently ripping my toilet from the floor so he can get a better look at the pipes to see how much damage he needs to do to my apartment to fix the blockage in the pipes. He's also smoking a cigarette and dropping the ashes in my toilet. That's the least of the things I'll have to clean up tonight.

All this is to say I've learned a deep, important cultural lesson today.

From behind, plumbers look the same all over the world.

It's a small world after all.

from the kitchen of a genius

I like to consider myself a good cook. In the past couple years, I've learned how to have everything ready at the same time, how to make sauces out of all kinds of ingredients, and how to improvise when you find out 6 more people are coming to community group than you had planned on feeding.

Since Spain doesn't offer many pre-packaged meals, and fresh stuff is the cheapest, I've learned to cook from scratch, and except for a few incredibly bad dinners, I do ok. I don't always (or ever) stick to the rules of the recipe, but all kitchen artists are allowed a little "creative license," right? Anyway, whether it's true or not, I like to think of myself as a better cook than most, or at least some, American girls my age.

Today I ventured into baking. I'm making brownies for my community group's Christmas party tonight. Now I've made brownies before in the States, and it only takes a few minutes to put everything together. Granted, everything's already in a box and only requires eggs, but still, how hard can it be? I am a genius in the kitchen.

Come to find out, baking has some pretty hard and fast rules that you can't break. Here are a few that I learned tonight.

1) Yes, you actually are required to measure things.

2) Every house should have a spatula. If not, you will have chocolate up to your
elbows.

3) No one's going to help you figure out how exactly to put HALF an egg in the bowl,
or what to do with the other half. You're a grownup now--figure it out yourself!

4) Spanish brown sugar is not the same consistency of American brown sugar. The
jury's still out as to whether this will affect the outcome of the brownie.

5) You have kitchen appliances for a reason. You won't get any bonus points for mixing things by hand when you could have used the mixer. And again, you will have chocolate up to your elbows, as well as a sore arm.

6) Buy twice as much chocolate as the recipe calls for. I'll explain later.

7) If you try to melt chocolate in the microwave, you should probably check on it once in a while. If it's smoking when it comes out, you might have overdone it a bit. If it has black, charcoal like lumps in it, you've definitely overdone it.

8) Chocolate is one of the best smells in the world, so it would stand to reason that burnt chocolate is a slightly singed version of one of the best smells in the world. That is a lie. It smells like burnt hope or a crushed dream. Or an unemptied garbage can.

9) Go light every candle and all the incense in the apartment immediately after burning chocolate, so that your guests don't walk in and say "Who burned brownies?"

10) Now take out the second half of the chocolate you bought. (I told you I would explain) and try melting it on the stove. Don't burn it--you only bought enough to mess up once.

11) You should have read all the directions before going to the store, not just the list of ingredients. They assume you'll have something to grease the pan with.

12) They also assume that you know to preheat the oven before you mix stuff together so that you don't have to wait another 10 minutes for it to heat up, stupid.

13) Flour goes everywhere, even if you're careful. You'll be finding flour for the next 3 days. And if it sticks to the chocolate that is up to your elbows, you may never be clean again.

14) Leave time for a shower before your guests arrive. You'll need it.

15) Baking is harder than cooking.

So the final version of the batter is in the oven, and if nothing else, the batter tasted good. I still have my doubts as to whether or not it will turn into brownies.

I think I'll stick to the stovetop from now on.

tired ramblings and thoughts about a sabbath

I should be in bed right now--I'm ridiculously tired and there's no reason for me to be awake, much less blogging. Oh well. Beware that this blog may ramble a bit.

Today we had the Christmas brunch with Mountainview out in the suburbs--I sang along with the jazz band during the cafe part and led worship during the service with a few carols. Nothing big, but enough to wear a person out. There's something about leading worship which makes you about 400 times more tired than just being in the worship band. I enjoyed it, though. Christmas carols are more interesting to sing and more difficult, so even though I found out that this makes them harder to lead, I love singing challenging stuff.

Things are slowing down here for the next couple weeks, and I'm ready for it. I've been back almost a month, and I feel like I haven't quite "landed" all the way yet. December is a crazy month, following several crazy months of furlough beforehand! I'm not whining, I promise. I'm soooo glad to be back. I just need to go to bed.

My refrigerator is empty because I haven't had time to go to the grocery store, my computer desk still isn't put together, I still have 2 boxes of office stuff that I evidently "needed" enough to move here from the last place, but I don't even know what's in there. My floors are about 2 weeks past being in desperate need of a good mopping, and don't even get me started on laundry! After the Christmas party in my apartment tomorrow night, it's time to get started on this stuff.

Half of me is excited to have the down time to check all these things off of my list. Ok, not half. More like a fifth. The other 80% knows that what I really want to do is spend at least 2 days fatting around in my pajamas, staring at the wall--kind of my own little "busyness detox" program. Then I'll knock all the other stuff out in one day, and then I'll go hang out with the Cady's and the Crulls for Christmas (too many C's--I feel like the oddball).

One thing I really want to do in the next couple weeks is to stop doing what I just did in the last paragraph--plan, plan, plan. I don't want to worry about being productive or professional. I want to rest.

And refocus.

I was on the bus tonight, and had a good amount of time to sit and think, and the thought just kept popping into my head that I'm sometimes so desperate to be productive. For what? For God? I tell myself so, but in the end I think it's often just because I want to feel productive. I want to look at what I've done in a week and say "Wow! Look how much I've worked this week! Look at how many people I've met with and how many projects I've started/finished/worked on! Look how spotless my living room is and how great a hostess for community group I am! Watch me serve!" Who, honestly, am I trying to impress? Nobody's looking but me. Any of you who have ever lived with me or been in my house know I'm pretty crap at keeping clean house anyway.

Maybe (ok, definitely) God knew what He was doing when He created a Sabbath for rest. The more I look at the pattern of productivity obsession that I tend to fall into, the more I realize that God doesn't just want me to rest because He knows I'm tired. He wants me to rest because He knows I'm proud. He knows that I need a physical reminder that the world keeps turning even when I'm not productive. I'm not the center of the universe after all. He is big enough to work even when my boxes are unpacked and floors are dirty and laundry is a mess and projects are half finished or not even started. I'm thinking God created Sabbath because He wants something deeper from me than my productivity, and even though I know it, I need to be reminded again and again.

So I think I'll take those 2 days in my pajamas staring at the wall, and see what happens after that. I may take a 3rd day.

For now, I'm going to bed.

Merry Christmas, Kelly Wills

I bought a Christmas tree yesterday--the first big one I've ever bought. It's 180 cm tall, which is 5.85 feet, for those of us to whom centimeters means nothing at all (I had to look it up--I didn't know either). Not the tallest in the world, but the biggest I could find. It will do. I'm ridiculously excited about it. I can't wait to take it home and fix it up with all the trimmings.....

oops.

I don't have any trimmings. Not one light, not one garland. No ribbons or tree skirt. No star. I can't even find my Bing Crosby Merry Christmas CD. I have one little gold ornament with black bears on it--it says Harlan County, KY, I think. It's my first ornament. I plan to go to a cien pesetas store or to the market in the Plaza Mayor to get decorations, but the thought of it still makes me a little sad. No matter how much I spend on decorations (which won't be much), It can never compare to the tree in my parents' house. It's the most beautiful tree in the world.

Our family has been considering getting a new tree for at least the past decade. The box it was stored in has long ago disintegrated, so now it's just wrapped up in a sheet (often fastened with panty hose tied around it) for most of the year, hanging from bungee cords in the garage. I've always thought it kind of looked like a body hanging up there, but there's my overactive imagination for you. And too much CSI.

But when we put the tree together, it's magical. Shaping it is always a painstaking job, pulling out each individual twig from each branch, making sure that each bough curves like a real tree (rather than sticking straight out in fake tree fashion), enough to look realistic but not so much at the bottom that the tree will be too skinny at the top. And of course, it only can be shaped while listening to Bing Crosby. Next come the lights. Inevitably, at least one string is missing a bulb that has to be sought out, and at least 3 or 4 have been put away improperly and we wonder who on earth went up into the attic and messed up the strings of lights that were in perfectly good shape last MARCH when we put the tree away (another blog subject there, eh?).

The white lights are wrapped around the middle of the tree--as far inside as they will go, followed by strings of colored lights on the middle and outside. This makes the tree look infinitely deep, as if it were its own Narnia-like forest where you could walk in and never come out the other side. Next come the garlands (silver, gold, sometimes red). At this point it's getting late, so we leave the ornaments for the next day, turning out the lights and enjoying our half-done, but still beautiful, work of art.

The next day, with Bing back on (maybe interspersed with Amy Grant's christmas album and Handel's Messiah, but Bing is the standard), we start the ornaments. Here's where the real magic starts. It is scientifically impossible for all those ornaments to fit on that tree. First there are the clear glass balls that go deep into the tree to reflect all the colored lights. After that, we have the colored glass balls--boxes upon boxes upon boxes. The tree is full. But we're just getting started. Now it's time for the fun stuff.

My parents have been married over 30 years, and haven't thrown away an ornament. There are the ones from their first years of mairrage, a few from their childhoods, and my sisters' and my baby ornaments. They're both teachers, so each year the collection is added to by students who either have conscientious parents or who are making a last ditch effort at upping their B+ to an A-. There is the white paper dove that Mrs. Martin gave me in the first grade. There is Kim's popsicle stick sled, painted red. There is the aluminum foil angel that Country Mother (my great-grandmother) made. There is the wooden nativity, the clothespin reindeer and the cuckoo clock. There is the dancing soldier, the red ice cream cone looking thing, and the countless pictures of us as kids. I had really big teeth in the second grade, and wore a purple dress. There is the Star Trek ship where you press a button and Mr. Spock says "Starship to Enterprise...Starship to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy Holidays. Live long, and prosper." There is a tiny bird's nest that rests on top of a branch, and a cat that has "Fluffy" written in marker on the back of it--my grandmother got it for our cat. (Only she called him Fluffy. To the rest of us, he was Fat Boy) Sometimes, to finish it off, we would buy a box of candy canes and hang them from any branches left unadorned. All of these ornaments had their own hierarchy of importance. Kim and I, for years, had staked out which ones were ours to hang, and hanging someone else's ornament was right up there with blasphemy in our family. There are some things you just don't do.

I remember finally being old enough to hang things near the top of the tree when I used the cricket (wooden stool) that Uncle Poppy made, and then finally feeling like a full fledged adult when I didn't even need that help anymore. I was 14. I had arrived.

The house was always quiet the night after the tree was decorated. Usually there would be a Christmas movie on TV or something, and we would turn the lights down in the rest of the house and congregate in the living room around the tree. We never made a plan to do this--I think we all just decided together to take that time and admire our handiwork. There is our family--me, my sisters, my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and now neices and nephews, all represented in one way or another on our tree. The more you look, the more stories you remember. Sure, the tree is a bit busier than ones you would see in "Good Housekeeping," but it's the most beautiful tree in the world. Ever since I was little, I remember being so proud when a visitor would come into the house and start the ooh's and ahh's, touching ornaments and asking the stories behind them.

This will be my first Christmas away from home.

So even though I'm excited about my new tree, having my own tree makes me a little sad. It's like an admittance that I'm an adult, that I have to make my own tree now and start collecting my own ornaments to put on the tree (although, Mama, if you want to send me some of ours, I'll be more than happy to take them off your hands.) I'm only 24. I don't have years of stories to tell for different ornaments. At best I can make the tree beautiful, but it still won't be our tree in Kentucky.

But I do have one ornament with a story. I have my Harlan County black bears ornament that my mom gave me before I came back to Spain. My first real ornament for my first real tree! It's just a little ornament, but it means alot to me, and will have a prominent place on my tree.

I would like to have seen my parents' tree in its first year. Were the ornaments sparse? Was my mom sad that there weren't many stories on it yet? What a difference a couple decades makes.

I hope that in 30 years I will have a tree that's just maybe a little too old, with too many ornaments, so that my tree is full almost to the point of bursting with things from my parents and grandparents, and my own family. I hope that my kids will get excited about paper doves and popsicle stick sleds and clotheshanger reindeer. And then I can point to the Harlan County ornament and say "This was my first ornament."

"And this one next to it? I got that at a market in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain..."

I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Touching the Untouchable

This is the talk I gave at Oasis last Saturday, part of a series we're doing on parts of the body. For the full effect, go find a copy of "The Fatal Wound" by Switchfoot.


When we were talking about the “body parts” series and Troy asked me if I would do the teaching on hands, I started reading through the gospels to look at what Jesus did with His hands, and what I found was pretty amazing. Jesus used his hands a lot—sometimes in ordinary ways and sometimes in very extraordinary—even miraculous—ways. One thing that stuck out to me over and over is that whenever the Bible mentions that Jesus touches someone, something amazing happens.

But out of all the stories of things Jesus did that we see in the Bible, the one that stuck out to me the most was the story of Jesus healing the leper. There are a couple of different instances of Jesus healing someone with leprosy, and this is the first of those—you can find it in Matthew 8, Mark 1, and Luke 5. This is definitely one of those instances of Jesus touching someone and amazing things happening, and for those of us who have grown up in church, we’ve heard the story before and it will sound familiar to us. I’m going to read the story as it’s written in the book of Luke, and as I read it I want you to visualize the scene—close your eyes if it helps.

Luke 5:12-13
12While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."
13Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" And immediately the leprosy left him.

Ok, now that I’ve read the story, I want to expand a little bit on this so we can see more clearly what’s going on.

First, to understand the story, we need to know what a leper is. More commonly known as Hansens’ Disease, leprosy is a condition that damages and deadens nerve endings, but it’s most commonly characterized by its outwardly visible effects: skin lesions. In the Bible, conditions that were visible through knots, scabs, white places, and other nastiness in the skin are referred to as leprosy. So whatever it was that this guy had, it was painful and disfiguring, and generally not a fun disease to have.

Leprosy was a contagious disease and declared unclean by law, meaning that anyone who was “clean” could not touch them. And in that culture, clean and unclean was a big deal. Staying clean and avoiding the unclean was a priority. So even though quarantine is a good idea to stop the spread of a disease, you can see that this would have repercussions in how these people were viewed. There was a strong social stigma attached to it. Lepers didn’t even live inside the city—they lived in a camp on the outskirts of town, only in contact with other lepers. They were completely disassociated from society--non persons. And touching them would immediately put the toucher in the same boat. To touch something unclean causes you to become unclean by law. To keep from making others unclean and from spreading the disease, the unclean person was required to let others know he was unclean so they wouldn’t accidentally come too close and be contaminated. So on top of the pain of the disease itself, the sick person was forced to make himself more miserable by driving away anyone who came close. Imagine the pain of not only being sick, but also being completely isolated.

Maybe originally maybe he thought that whatever was wrong would clear up, but it just got worse and worse—so bad, actually, that Luke points out that he was “covered” with leprosy. By this point, there was no hope of the disease just going away. And even if there were a cure, what doctor would risk his life and his social standing to touch him?

It doesn’t say where this man has heard of Jesus from, but obviously he has some knowledge of what Jesus has done and the authority he seems to have over sickness and even demons. If this man had read the prophets, maybe he even had an idea or a just a hope that this could be the Messiah that was promised. He knew enough about what this man had said and done, and that he had the power to heal. So why not ask? But even with the courage to ask, a little bit of doubt was still there. We see that in the way that he brings his request to Jesus. “If you are willing, you can make me clean.” Notice he didn’t say heal my disease or relieve my pain—he said make me clean. Put me back in society. Let me be alive with the world around me again. But first, “if you are willing.” Jesus had the power, but if he was so holy and had so much authority, would he care about a leper? Would he come close enough to heal him, or maybe he could do it from a distance.

I don’t think that in his wildest imagination the leper expected what happened next. Jesus did not act afraid, appalled, or repulsed. He didn’t immediately judge the leper for approaching him instead of backing away and saying “unclean!” He didn’t give any platitudes from a distance—no “I’m so sorry’s or anything like that.” Instead, before saying anything, he reached out his hand and touched the leper. What on earth was he thinking? Jesus didn’t have leprosy. He wasn’t unclean, but he had just done something that no one—NO ONE—would do if they were in their right mind. He reached out and touched a leper. Then he said, “I am willing” and healed him.

The more I read this, the more I just can’t get over it. Jesus touched a leper.

You know, Jesus could have healed the leper with His words—there are other instances in the Bible where Jesus speaks and the person is healed, even from a long distance away. But he made a point of touching the leper. He didn’t touch him after healing him or even while he was healing him, but before. While the leper was still unclean, Jesus intentionally, physically touched a leper.

Imagine this man’s surprise, after what he had been through. Every sore told another story of a frightened child running to the other side of the street, every ache a reminder of the one word that had come out of his mouth over and over….”unclean.”

But Jesus touched the untouchable, and something amazing happened.

Before the physical signs of the disease were healed, Jesus’ touch had already begun to heal deeper wounds that no doctor could attend to.The touch healed isolation and said “you are not alone.” To every sore that Jesus’ hand came in contact with, his touch said “I am not afraid of you. You are my creation.” To the word unclean Jesus’ touch said —“you’re clean to me now, you are valid, you are worth healing, you are worth touching. You are not forgotten, not alone. You are not abandoned, and you are not worthless.”

Jesus touched the untouchable, and something amazing happened.

Now, I want to split this up and look at two perspectives—Jesus’ and the leper’s. Both did amazing things—Jesus touched the untouchable, and the leper had the guts to ask him. Where do we find ourselves in this story?

First, look at what Jesus did. He touched the untouchable. I don’t know about you, but when I think of the word untouchable, I think of a political or religious caste system or something like that. Of course it’s in some other culture, and of course there wouldn’t be any untouchables in my life, would there? As long as a person doesn’t smell bad, act rude, look dirty, look creepy, place themselves more than arms distance out of my way, make me cry, make me mad, think I’m immature, always want to argue, have a cold, or have come in contact with anything contagious, sure, I’ll touch anyone. See how progressive I am? Anyway, we can always carry hand sanitizer, right?

Wow.

How many times have I walked under the tunnel between Parque del Oeste and Plaza de España and picked up my pace past the row of mattresses? How much contact did I avoid with my last downstairs neighbor because I was sure she’d yell at me for some new offense? How many days go by at a time that I only associate with the people I like? How many difficult conversations have I avoided with the people I love because I’m afraid it will cause a fight?

But when I look at Jesus’ perspective in the story, He breaks all these boundaries down. When he touches a leper, he not only defies custom, but in my mind, defies common sense! He could have caught something! At the very least he would have to go through the hassle of going to the priest to be cleansed and pronounced clean, not to mention the argument that this action could spark with the religious leadership. He could have been compassionate from the other side of the street and yelled out “I am willing,” and then healed him. There was no physical reason to touch him. After all, couldn’t he have just dropped money in his cup without making eye contact or touching him? Jesus’ action doesn’t leave room for me to avoid people for all the reasons I make up.

Are you uncomfortable yet? I am. When I look at my life, I don’t see this behavior. I see a sqeaky clean, sanitized life. I see comfort and very little risk. I see common sense in who I touch and who I associate with, and I don’t see much room for anything or anyone untouchable.

But I don’t want this to be a guilt fest, and I don’t think that’s what God intends either. That’s not what He did in this story. Jesus didn’t turn around from the leper and go find some Pharisees to yell at for not touching him. He did it himself. Instead of being guilty, maybe this is an opportunity to imagine what could happen if we did it ourselves. Imagine what would happen if we stopped and talked to a beggar on the street, put our hand on their shoulder, told them to have a nice day? What would happen if we gave a hug to a person who is hurting, even when we don’t know what to say? What if we took the time to tear down a relational wall that we’ve built up between ourselves and a person we’re in regular contact with? What if each of us decided that this week we are going to touch one person who we usually would consider untouchable? We’re not shaking up the world here, but there are about, what? 50 people in this room? Then, if nothing else, we have affected 50 people. Whether it makes a big difference or a small difference, we have told 50 people that they matter enough for us to touch them.

I’m blown away by what Jesus did in this story. Jesus touched the untouchable, and amazing things happened.

Or maybe now we need to step back and look at it from the leper’s perspective. So here is a leper approaching Jesus—something that probably took every bit of courage in him to do. Maybe he had nothing to lose—maybe he was desperate. But whatever the motivation, it still would have to be hard to get up the guts to ask. After telling the world he was unclean for so long, the word begins to take on meaning beyond skin condition. Unclean, don’t come near, contagious, bad news, bad things will happen if you come near me. I am untouchable, unworthy of touch. I must deserve to be alone. From a distance, people pity, but from close up they are only afraid, so why would Jesus be any different?

His touch to the leper said “I don’t care if you come to me clean or not. I’ll make you clean, but I’m not afraid of dirt. I’m not afraid of disease or sin or bad relationships or isolation.”

Jesus touched the untouchable, and amazing things happened.

And amazing things are still happening….

He didn’t doubt Jesus’ power to heal—just his willingness. Do we do that? What part of our own life is untouchable? What hurt is too deep, too isolated? What sin is too horrible? What relationship is too far beyond repair? What personality trait is too reprehensible? What things are just too personal?

Just like how Jesus’ encounter with the leper leaves us no room for the untouchables around us, it also leaves us no room to keep “untouchables” within ourselves.

I just listed off a pretty long list of people I don’t want to touch, and to be honest, I’m ashamed that it’s so long. I don’t like that about myself, and I would rather not tell a roomful of people, much less admit it to God. But as uncomfortable as it makes me too look at myself and realize how afraid I am to touch the untouchable, I see the leper and realize I can approach Jesus with that too. He’s not afraid of it—he’s not appalled at my lack of compassion or afraid of my immaturity.

I’m amazed. I’m blown away. And most of all I’m thankful. I’m thankful that in reality, I am not untouchable, that there is no hurt too deep or too isolated. I’m thankful that there is no sin too horrible and no relationship beyond repair, that I am not too reprehensible or appalling to Jesus and that nothing is too personal.

So in the end, the story—the leper’s story and our story—comes back full circle, to Jesus. When I tried to put myself in Jesus’ place in the story, willingly touching the untouchable, I found myself hopelessly lacking, so proud and so afraid and so concerned with myself and my health and my cleanliness that I can’t do anything for the leper. So I become the leper, sick and sore and scraping up every ounce of courage I have to say to Jesus, “if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

And the story goes back to Jesus. He touches the untouchable, and amazing things happen.