Ten men with a terrible disease stood on a hill by the side of a road. They were waiting for the healer to pass by; He was their last hope. Suddenly they saw him. They kept their distance because they were contagious, but they cried out with weak and pleading voices: Jesus, help us! Please help us!

Jesus answers everyone who calls His name. He looked at them, and they had never seen such love and compassion as they saw in His eyes. “Go get your certification of good health and return home to your loved ones.” When He spoke, his very words entered them like a breath of healing power, and they were healed, all ten of them.

One man ran back to Jesus and fell at His feet thanking Him. “Where are the other nine?” Jesus told the man in front of him to go home like the rest, except he would go home whole. He was not only healed, but he was given a clean heart with peace of mind and joy.

We can ask God to help us, and we can even have prayers answered from a distance, but to be made whole we must come close to Jesus. All ten men were probably thankful for their healing, but only one gave thanks to the healer. Jesus noticed, and He was saddened, not because He wasn’t thanked, but because there were nine who could have had so much more.

We pray for healing, but we don’t ask to be made whole. Perhaps we don’t think that there is a difference between the two; there is. We don’t talk the Biblical language as much anymore and the idea of Jesus’ kind of wholeness seems to have been discarded. If we could have looked at the skin of all ten men, we would have seen God’s healing power. If we could have seen the person on the inside of that skin; we would have seen in only one of them, the difference between healed, and being made whole.

“Lord Jesus, I long to be perfectly whole;
I want Thee forever to live in my soul,
Break down every idol, cast out every foe;
Now wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”