or Thoughts on Broken Bones and the Power of God

I’m not good at sitting still. I mean that. When I sit down, I get up again. It’s a compulsion, but more than that: It’s a desire and a delight. I like doing All The Things.

Sunday morning my pastor was talking about healed lepers as I was looking at the boot on my foot, aware that all I’ve been told to do is stay off it. Stay off it and it will heal.

This weekend was spring. It’s still February. But it was spring. The birds and I were euphoric for no reason but how the sky looked and how the air felt. There in my front yard, barely an inch tall, a bunch of purple crocuses opened. All I had to do to make that happen was nothing.

I’ve been thinking about life-force a lot these days. Paul writes to Timothy about “the power with which God raised Christ from the dead.” I’ve been thinking about how that power is in the warp and woof of our whole existence. Not only for the whole world: bones and bodies that heal, crocuses that didn’t need any help, and the first warm day of February when even the bare trees and brown grass magically look like Aslan has been here. But doubly for us, children of the resurrection: We belong to God. Spring is inevitable even for souls marked by death with more than annual ashes. Mine, my children’s, my husband’s. Yours.

The conjunction of spring and the X-ray that revealed that my foot has been broken for four months, not strained for two weeks as I’d assumed, was loudly incongruous for me. Every year when spring comes my eager spirit comes out of hibernation. My inability to sit still reaches fever pitch. I do more things, think more thoughts, and feel more feelings in the first weeks of spring than in an entire Minnesota winter.

But not this time. This time I watched my kids at the park from a picnic blanket and I read most of a book and dozed on the couch, because I know that the only way my foot will heal – the only hope I have for my next run – is stillness.

Sit still and let it happen. Sit still and it will heal.

Perhaps second to the story for which this blog is named, my favorite Old Testament story is in 2 Chronicles 20, when Jehoshaphat is king and the people of Judah are facing disaster at the hands of their enemies. The people cry out God: “We are powerless against this! We do not know what to do! But our eyes are on you.” And God’s answer comes, perfect:

Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. Tomorrow go down against them….You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf, O Judah and Jerusalem.

I thought of this moment in history again yesterday as I sat listening to the story of healed lepers and looking at my broken foot. Sometimes we do not need to fight the battle. Sometimes our work is to stand still and hold our position and see: The world is hard-wired for life and for spring. For resurrection and for the victory of Christ the King.