And When He Saw Their Faith

The friends of the paralytic man were so committed to helping their friend that they shouldered through a crowd, climbed up to the roof, vandalized a complete stranger's home and then lowered their friend through a hole in the ceiling. "And when He saw their faith, [Jesus] said unto him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee" (Luke 5:20). We may often feel powerless as we watch those we love suffer. We may get discouraged that any effort to help is either pathetically insignificant or else so poorly applied that it ends up backfiring and making things worse. It requires great faith to push past the awkwardness and the inadequacies and the misunderstandings that crowd between us and the Savior's help for our friends and loved ones. We may have to climb up above the walls of mistrust and break through the doubts and fears to get our loved ones in touch with the Savior. Even if every bone in our bodies screams that this won't work, even if our loved one is telling us verbally or implicitly to give up hope and stop trying to help, we don't have to let go. We can smash through the roof and drop our loved one on the Savior's head if that's what it takes. It may be true in the Parable of the ten virgins that the wise could not share their oil with the foolish, but nowhere does it say that those whose lamps burned bright were forbidden from taking their foolish brothers and sisters and saying, "Here, I can't share my oil but I can share my light. Let's go find you some oil so your lamp can shine too." I know that God sees our faith and heals and forgives our loved ones because of it.