ARISE, MAKE THY BED

ACTS 9:34

            The words of our text are beautiful words in the Scripture.  Aeneas has been crippled for eight years and bed fast.  Most of his family and friends saw his case as one that was hopeless.  No one expected to see him ever walking again.  So when he was made whole by the power of Christ, it was indeed a miracle to all who saw him making his bed.

For some of us, it was not always a good thing for us to hear such words. Working on the dairy I never felt as if I had gotten enough sleep and most of the time I had not because I had not gone to bed at an appropriate hour the night before.  Sleep was the last thing on my mind until the wee morning hours when my mom or dad would call my name and inform me that it was time to “arise.”

Getting up early to go to school was never fun especially if mother added those awful words “make up your bed.”  Is there a real good reason for making up your bed?  It seems to me the bed is much easier to get into if the covers are already thrown back.  Don’t worry, I have been trained differently now but I have not forgotten how it once was, the pillow laying there with the imprint of your head already in it just waiting for you to lay down and place your head right back where it was when you arose that morning and your sheets are already wrinkled, you do not have to go to the trouble of messing everything up again.

Do you think that Aeneas may have experienced some similar thoughts earlier in his life?  Maybe he had some mornings when he thought I just do not want to get out of this bed?  He may have said “I just do not want to go to work today” or “I do not want to face what awaits me outside the walls of my home.”

Is it not amazing what eight years of the palsy can do?  It will make you jump at the sound of “Arise.”  Eight years of hopelessness will help one to grasp at an opportunity to trust in the power of Jesus for healing.  To see that old bed from the standing position was one of the greatest blessings of life.  Can you see him look down on that pillow and see that deep imprint of his head from eight long years of twenty-four hour a day use and at the first sound of “Make thy bed” he reaches down and grabs that pillow and beats and shakes and fluffs that old pillow until there is absolutely no sign whatsoever that his head ever laid on it.  I’m sure he made his bed.  The next time he lay down in that bed he wanted it to feel like a brand new bed.  No, standing up would never be the same and neither would lying down.  What a difference Jesus had made.

Would you agree with me that we take too many things for granted?  What a privilege just to make our bed?

 

Yours in Christ,

 

Brother Randy Burtram

 

   (Originally published June 30, 2013)