The Leper's Spot

I was reading in Leviticus today. Currently I am on the chapters that speak about leprosy. I never really appreciated these chapters until I moved to Ghana. In Ghana it is still a common disease. I can still remember the first time that I meet a leper.

My family and I used to live in a community called Bomso. Whenever we went to town we always passed the main intersection on the Accra road. And just like many intersection in Africa, there where beggars that stood at this intersection and begged for money. One man always seemed to be there, and I gave him coins off and on. Then one day as this man was putting out his begging bowl to me, I noticed that he was missing all his figures, and that they where covered in Gentian Violet (that is an ointment that people use here on infected wounds, it turns the skin a bright purple). All at once I realized that he had not lost his fingers in an accident, like I thought, but that he was a leper. I will tell you, that when that thought hit me, while my hands where touching his on the begging bowl, the feeling that raced through me was utter terror! I was overwhelmed! Leprous! I saw the man off and on after that, but the disease keep progressing, until finally I think that he had to join one of Ghana's colonies.

It is amazing how the Bible becomes alive when you live in a third-world country. I have learned a lot about leprosy since I have been here. Leprosy is a disease that attacks the nerve endings first, this happens long before the deterioration even beginnings. So that means that the leper does not feel any pain, he/she is just slowly consumed by the disease until it spreads so much that the person finally dies from infection. The person is a walking, living, corpse. The amazing thing is, even when the person is utterly unclean, and has to cry out and tell everyone, though people see the lepers misery, the leper does not feel any pain. The feelings have been burned out of him. When I thought about that this morning it was such a perfect picture of sin. We are infected with it, and it begins it work within us, slowly it kills our feelings. Before long we see the damage of this sin disease, and before long we are 'past feeling' as the Bible says, and walking in the world with our lips covered, saying "Unclean, unclean". We have become untouchable by man, we are broken, humbled, and alone. Sin, even after salvation at times seem to make us so unlcean. And in the words of Paul "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

As I thought about this sad reality, I read chapter 14 of Leviticus. Chapter 14 talks about how a leper was declared CLEAN! The Twi words to one of our hymns kept passing through my mind: Awurade, mahu! Se Wo tumi nkutoo, Besa kwata kuro... (translation: Lord, I have seen, it is your power only, that washes the leper's disease (spots)). When no one has the power to touch us, let alone heal us, He stretches forth His hand, and like every time in the gospels, he touches us. And with that touch we are healed.

God thank you for loving me enough to touch me with Your almighty hand! God help me to live as the cleansed person that you have made me.