I was looking at the stars last night before bed and began to pray, as I usually do at that place and time.  It is a pleasant ritual I have of beholding the extraordinary beauty of the southern California night sky, before locking our back door and going into the bedroom, where we will read the Bible, pray and then retire for the day.  As I said my prayer last night, I asked God to break the chains that might bind me, especially those that might keep me from realizing His power and my own potential.  Without any fanfare I saw that Jesus does that.

On previous nights, we had been reading the gospel of Luke and there we read of Christ’s early ministry and his early miracles.  Last night, as I considered the starry sky, it suddenly came to me that Christ is always lifting us up.  In his miracles, he healed the lame, fed the hungry, gave sight to the blind, revived the dead and freed people from debilitating mental or spiritual illnesses, which were then called demon possession.  It suddenly became clear to me that this is the basic ministry of Jesus.  He lifts us up.

Jesus lifts us up to heaven, through his sacrificial death and resurrection.  He heals us of our physical infirmities.  He corrects our mental weaknesses.  He restores us to a relationship with God and removes our sins on a daily basis.  In a figurative sense, he lifts us up in all ways.  If we neglect His role as our healer and restorer, we miss a great deal of what He can do for us.  In a sense, we are like children, who are being carried on their father’s shoulders.  For a moment they have the giddy pleasure of height and perhaps even a little fear from it, but either way, they are safe and secure on their father’s shoulders.  Jesus bore our sins for us, and he spoke of the Good Shepherd who returns with the lost sheep on his shoulders.  Wherever He found them, Jesus lifted people up, in a literal and a figurative sense.  He healed them, He helped them, He made their lives better.

I am grateful for this realization about Jesus.  In my Christian life, I have accepted that Jesus was God’s Son, and that he was the sacrifice for my sins, but I have sometimes failed to go any further with the thought.  Now I see how He is also the One who lifts us up in life, and eventually to heaven, because of His blood.  Perhaps that was an instantaneous answer to my prayer on the patio: He removed the obstacle that kept me from realizing who He is and what He can do.  Now I see Him in many more ways, and I am grateful for this breakthrough, which could only have come through His grace and power.

When Peter tried to walk on the water, he failed.  Christ lifted him onto the boat.  What a lovely simile!  Christ lifts us out of sin and confusion, and brings us onto the ship of salvation, safe and secure with Him forever.  Thank you, Jesus!  Peter was depending on his own strength, and found, as we all have to find, that he did not have the power to reach heaven.  For that goal we must all depend on Jesus.  Thank you, Lord!