"But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us."
I’m amazed at how familiar I am with my trials, and how unfamiliar I am with the one who holds me in the midst of those trials.
Jesus encounters a man whose son has been afflicted.
He asks this father about his son's affliction, and watch how fast the words come. He doesn't have to work hard. He knows in specific detail. It seizes him and throws him down. He foams, he grinds his teeth, he goes rigid. It started in childhood, and it has thrown him into fire and into water to kill him.
This is a man who has watched one thing for years, and he knows it well.
Then he mentions Jesus
He’s fluent in the struggle, but grasps to find any vocabulary at all when he turns from the problem to the person.
"If you can do anything." Four exact details about the demon’s work, and one shrug about the healer in front of him. He can tell you everything the affliction does. He can barely tell you anything about Jesus.
He knows his trouble by heart and Jesus by rrumor.
Jesus catches the word
Jesus won’t let the statement go unnoticed.
"If you can!" The father meant it as a question about Jesus' power. But the word was never measuring Jesus. It was measuring how well the father knew him. You don't say "if you can" to someone you actually know.
The "if" revealed far more than this father realized.
Faith the size of what you know
His faith turned out to be exactly as big as his acquaintance with Jesus.
Years studying the affliction, a few minutes with Jesus. Of course the demon got the detailed sentence and Jesus got the maybe. Nobody leans hard on a stranger, no matter how badly they need them. The father wasn't short on faith in general. He was just fluent in the wrong thing.
He had become an expert in his trouble and a beginner at Jesus.
The question underneath
We do the same thing without noticing.
We can describe what's wrong with real precision. We know the timeline, the triggers, the intensity, what it has cost us, and how long it has gone on. Then we get to Jesus, and all we have is a shrug.
Which one could you describe in more detail right now, the thing that's wrong, or the one you keep handing it to?