You and I are different. Okay, so I may slightly more different than you, but each of us is different from each other. Things that you are competent at, I’m not. Things that I am, you aren’t.

As a result, each of us will be going through different training programs for our trust at different times.

In Matthew 17, we watch just such parallel tracks. Jesus took three disciples up a mountain where they were going to see wonders (discussed here and here). He left nine disciples (and more) with the crowd where they were going to ask for wonders.

A man asked them to heal his son. They tried. They couldn’t. When he came back, Jesus did.

When they asked Jesus what had gone wrong, why they could heal the boy, Jesus said, “you have so little faith.”

We can go lots of places with that. We have, in the life of the church. We have blamed sickness on a lack of faith rather than germs. We have blamed demons on sickness rather than spirits. We have struggled to explain suffering and have told people, “you have to believe more.”

I don’t know. I can’t explain sickness and suffering and selective healing. I do, however, have a suggestion about what happened to these disciples.

Jesus was up on the mountain. So were the cool disciples. When the man came to the ones who were left, they said, “Who, us? Wait til Jesus gets back.”

The boy was so burned, the father so burdened, that they felt sorry and thought, “It couldn’t hurt, it might help.” They thought, “if we can remember the formula.” So they said, “get well.” They said, “come out.”

Jesus comes and says, “It’s not about ‘it might help.’ It’s about knowing God can, when he wants.”