Jesus Is the Magic behind My Band Aid

This is a guest post from our good friend Amy.  I hope you’ve been following her story about her fight with cancer and the incredible lessons God is teaching her along the way.  You can read more of her posts here. The body does a miraculous thing when it heals itself.  Bandaids and outer fixes can seem magical at times but they are really just tools that support internal healing.  The support is important but not the full story.  Read on to find how Amy’s learning about bandaids and real healing for herself and the world.

When I was a little girl I used to love band aids. I thought they were magic.  I’d fall down, scratch my knee, (insert hysterical crying), mom or dad would clean it up, and then place the magical band aid on top.  A few days would pass…they’d pull off the sticky dirty thing and voila!  All better. To me, it all made sense.

Band aid=all better.

I couldn’t see what was happening underneath that Spiderman plastic. But all the while under that magical sticky thing, my body was repairing itself.

A Bigger Band Aid

I was receiving a treatment the other day from a young doctor that was covering for my regular doctor. Aside from the uncanny resemblance to Doogie Howser, he was kind and I actually trusted him to stick a long needle in my spine (insert hysterical crying).

The needle in my spine is part of my treatment. The needle comes in and replaces a few drops of my spinal fluid with medicine. It hurts. Okay, it hurts really bad (any of you women who have had an epidural or a spinal tap know what I am talking about, right?). I undergo this treatment every morning. And needless to say there is a highway of black and blue bruises running down the center of my spine.

On this particular morning, Doogie made a few silly jokes (I think he was more nervous than I was) and then asked me to lean forward so he could insert the needle. This is when my gown split down my back revealing my bruised and battered back for him to see. I don’t think he was expecting what he saw. And out of nervousness he joked to the nurse that he was going to “need a bigger band aid.”

Who Else Needs Band Aids?

While breathing deep and trying not to think about what was going on with me, my mind tried to think about others who are more bruised then I am…

• The Poor. The men, women, and children who have no place to lay their head at night, no food to eat and no clean water to drink. The poor need a GIANT band aid.
• The Orphans. The children who have no mother to hold them and no father to guide and protect them. Orphans need a HUGE band aid.
• The Hopeless. The ones who have no faith in Jesus, in their future, in a new world to come where there will be no pain, sickness, or tears and the eternal comfort of a Savior. The hopeless need an ENORMOUS band aid.

What’s a Band Aid Good For Anyway?

And all this thinking made me feel a little hopeless. I don’t need a bigger band-aid.  I need a bigger miracle.  No band aid is going to heal my back or my body.  And no band aid can fix the much larger ills of the world.

Though I’d love to put a huge band aid on my body, close my eyes and return to the naive belief that the sticky bandage will magically destroy my cancer, I just know it isn’t so.

^“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” 1 Corinthians 1: 3-4

But, band aids do serve some purpose in the healing, right?

• Band Aids protect our bruised and scratched and tender parts from exposure to more hurt.
• Band Aids pull the broken skin together and give it a chance to heal correctly.
• Band Aids give the body time to work its internal magic before the skin has to get back out there and start fighting dirt and hurt again.

The Church is the Band Aid, Jesus is the Magic

That is when I remembered:

• The lives touched by ministries at my church like the Hunger Ministry, the youth who are working for Habitat for Humanity, and the Tap Project. They are a band aid, He is our healer.
• The beautiful orphans who now have parents.  The little girl from China, a newly adopted daughter and a little boy from Ecuador who I sponsor through Compassion International. We are a band aid, He is our refuge.
• The hope shared by brothers and sisters around the world through service, missions, Sunday school classes, vacation Bible schools.  They are a band aid, He is our ever-present help.

I need some Jesus magic in my life. I need healing that can’t be explained-both in my body and in my spirit.  And the world needs these things, too.  In even greater magnitude.

The church can’t do this magic but the church can be a band aid. Friends from church can protect me, help pull me back together, and provide time for healing.  Jesus has to do the magical work of healing me, but the church can cover me (and the rest of the world) through the healing process, as we all wait for Jesus to say the final, ‘Voila!’

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Philippians 2:1-4

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