Making the Bed

The dreaded man cold is the most awful thing in the world. Before my son was born, I rarely got sick. Since then I am pretty sure I have had a cold for the last 3 years. Whenever I am laid out from whatever plague my son has introduced to our home, I always promise God that I will never take being healthy for granted again.

I say all of that tongue and cheek. I have never had to suffer a life-altering illness. Up till a few months ago, I had never had a loved one suffer a life-altering illness. When my mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, for the second time, last year the word fight was used a lot. A lot of energy was mustard up about how she was going to fight and overcome this awful disease and continue to live the American dream of a retiree.

But as the cancer spread throughout her body and made her most ordinary daily activities nearly impossible for her to do on her own, I don’t think she was thinking about traveling the world with her husband in their golden years. I imagine she was thinking about how nice it would have been to be able to sign her name without having to have someone assist her.

In the book of Acts, there is a short account of a man being healed by the Apostle Peter. We are told that this man, whose name is Aeneas, had been paralyzed and bedridden for eight years. Then we read,

And Peter said to him, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you; rise and make your bed.” And immediately he rose (Acts 9:34).

That’s it. That’s the story. I find it almost hilarious that the first thing Peter commands Aeneas to do once he had been miraculously healed by Jesus was to make his bed. Peter didn’t tell him to go shout from the mountaintop what the Lord had done for him. Peter didn’t tell him to go write a book or start a podcast testifying to Jesus’ faithfulness.

All he told him to do was make his bed.

I can only imagine how thankful Aeneas must had been to be able to perform the simple ordinary act of making his bed after lying on it paralyzed for eight years.

We live in a culture that makes us feel like we have to always be looking for the mountain top experiences. If you are of the church-going type you have most likely been formed by western evangelicalism to make you believe that you have to do something great for Jesus. I mean he died for your sins, so the least you can do is try to do something great in his name. The least you could do is change the world for him, right?

But what if we are putting too much pressure on ourselves?

What if Jesus has healed us so we can simply be faithful with the making our beds today?

What if Jesus is only asking you to be faithful with what is in front of you today?

Not everyone has the luxury of carrying out the ordinary tasks many of us begrudgingly perform everyday.

For some of us, making our bed is impossible.

Maybe you are in a season where you have to rely on your friends to care for you and change your sheets and help you sign your name. If that is you, please know that Jesus is still with you. He really is.

But for many of us, simply having the luxury of making our bed is enough. And someone how God can use that.

This weird little story in Acts ends like this,

And all the residents of Lydda and Sharon saw him, and they turned to the Lord (Acts 9:35).

This one man’s act of making his bed gave witness to his town of Jesus’ faithfulness in his life and they turned to the Lord.

May our faithfulness in the ordinary things be used by the Lord to bless others.

Grace and peace till we rise in glory.