“Behold, they will crucify him; and after he is laid in a sepulchre for the space of three days he shall rise from the dead, with healing in his wings; and all those who shall believe on his name shall be saved in the kingdom of God. Wherefore, my soul delighteth to prophesy concerning him, for I have seen his day, and my heart doth magnify his holy name. (2 Nephi 25:13). I’ve been thinking about the phrase “with healing in his wings.” I’ve been trying to figure out what wings have to do with healing, or what healing has to do with flying. This may seem like a weird segue, but in the movie Toy Story, after a series of acrobatic and aerodynamic maneuvers by the new toy Buzz Lightyear demonstrating his flying abilities, the exasperated and more than a little jealous old favorite Woody scoffs, “That isn’t flying...It’s falling with style.” All due respect to Woody, but all flying is essentially falling. After all, even the most long winded bird has to land at some point. Heck, even geosynchronous satellites in orbit around the Earth are technically falling continuously in a precise trajectory that keeps them from crashing back down to Earth. Now what does all this have to do with the fact that Christ has healing in His wings? When Christ healed the paralytic man, He first said, thy sins are forgiven thee. The man had fallen but when Christ forgave him, He gave the man wings to soar. And the man rose with healing in those wings. The bottom line is, all of us are falling most of the time. But we can either fall on our own power, leaping with all of our strength and crashing back down over and over again, a confused, heartbroken, bloody mess. Or we can fall with style. We can fall and then rise with healing in the wings that the Savior gives us. And then fall and then rise. And then fall and then rise. With each beat of the wings we rise and we are healed, and then when we fall again, we just rise once more with healing in our wings. Falling is inevitable, but crashing brutally against hard truth is not. We don’t have to fall gracelessly, completely without style. We can embrace the healing of our Savior’s wings and fall with style, drawing closer and closer to our Savior with each wingbeat.
