Urgency

While Advent is a season of patient waiting, watching, reflection and preparation, this morning's Gospel, Luke 5: 17-26, presents another important element:  urgency.  Friends of a paralytic are trying to approach Jesus to obtain a cure, but the crowd makes it impossible to enter the house where Jesus is teaching. With a touch of "Yankee Ingenuity" the men take the pallet to the roof, move the tiles and lower their friend to within the reach of Jesus. Seeing their faith, Jesus at first proclaims the man's sins forgiven, and then to respond to the objections of the scribes and Pharisees, cures the man, who immediately stood up, picked up his pallet and went home glorifying God.
Translating this to us today:  Do we have that faith and sense of urgency to get closer to Jesus and to help others come to him for healing (of soul or body) which would call from us extraordinary efforts to remove obstacles that stand in the way? To push through the distractions, sidebars and excuses that stand between us and Jesus?  Or that make us hesitant to help another approach him?  Perhaps we should pray to those friends of the paralytic to give us the faith and gumption to make a dramatic move in our lives to draw closer to Jesus ourselves or to help others to do so.  What a preparation for Christmas that would be!
Bro. Rene