Someone to Carry
Acts chapter 3 records the healing of a certain lame man. A man carried daily to the gate of the temple.
Who carried him?
Scripture doesn’t say.
But I think it’s safe to assume it was a friend or family member. Someone who loved him enough to carry him every day. Perhaps it was a number of people sharing the responsibility.
Perhaps it was one.
This man had been carried all his life. Being lame since birth, he never knew the joy of walking. Never experienced the freedom of going place to place on his own, always requiring the assistance of others. Never self-sufficient, able to earn a living, and now left to beg at the gate of the temple, hoping to get enough money to make it to another day.
A man is created by God to conquer. To find purpose in the things he does with his hands. To fight for, protect, and provide for his family. To be a warrior. (what the world has labeled “toxic masculinity” and why satan is trying so hard to emasculate men)
This man could fulfill none of these.
How many times, as a child, do you think he may have been left behind? How many times did he have to watch while his friends were playing?
How many times was he suffer shame, and feel like a burden to everyone?
When you understand the depth of this man’s suffering you’ll recognize he received much more than physical healing that day. The symbolism of Peter lifting him with his right hand should cause you, like the lame man, to leap with joy.
It was not only the strength in his legs that were restored, but his honor as well! He would no longer be looked down upon by society as a lowly beggar. He could now find employment, go wherever he wanted, and play tag with the children. His life now had a purpose, and he would no longer feel he was a burden to society.
No wonder he leaped for joy.
I’d love to know what happened to this man. Did he get married and have children of his own? Did he start a business? What did he do when he left the Temple?
And I wonder who he may have begun to carry.
Which brings me to you and me.
Did you know, just as this lame man was, so where we? Did you know, at no fault of our own, we were born lame, dead in our trespasses and sin? Having no hope, enemies of God, and alienated from Christ? (Eph 2:12, Ro 5:10)
We were spiritually “lame.”
Who influenced your life? Brought you to church? Loved on you? Believed in you? Never gave up on you?
In other words, who carried you?
In the short story “Footsteps in the Sand,” we are reminded that when we see only one set of footprints, it is then that Jesus carries us. How thankful we are for His faithfulness!
But did you know we are also commanded to “bear one another’s burdens?” (Ga 6:2) To carry our brothers and sisters when they are unable to walk. To reach out with our right hand and help them to their feet. To see them healed, delivered from shame, and find purpose.
All of this we can do…unless we see them as a burden.
Praising God in the Temple is a wonderful, but we can’t forget those who lay at the gate.
In 1969 The Hollies recorded the song, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” Always loved the song but didn’t know for years it was based on a true story. A story that drives home a lesson in the healing of the lame man.
When you love someone they’re not a burden, they’re not heavy, if they’re your brother.
Someone carried you…now it’s your turn.
I’m attaching the song, and a link to the story behind the song.
(please listen to the song, and the video embedded in the story behind the song)
Acts 3:2 (NKJV)
2 And a certain man lame from his mother’s womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms from those who entered the temple;
