The story about the man who was healed at the gate, beautiful in Acts 3 is intriguing on multiple levels. Peter and John went to the temple every day (actually three times a day) to pray, and the man who was lame from birth was carried along by others every day and sat down at the gate called beautiful in order to beg alms of those who were entering the temple. Did Peter and John just not see him all the times they had passed by to go to the temple to pray, or was it merely that this particular time the Holy Spirit revealed to them what Jesus wanted to do? The bottom line is that obviously, it was this man’s time. When I think about this lame beggar, I wonder what his thoughts were leading up to his healing. Certainly, he had heard the stories of this man Jesus healing people, particularly in the temple area. The man who had been crippled for 38 years was healed at the pool of Bethesda, which is near the sheep gate into the temple area was well-publicized healing as well as the blind beggar, and Jesus healed in John 9. I’m sure the man at the gate beautiful in acts 3 had heard those stories as well as many others. I wonder if he often thought about those others that he heard about who were healed and how he had missed his opportunity to have an encounter with Jesus since Jesus was now gone, or was he? The man wasn’t asking for healing, for even if he had hoped that Jesus would pass by, it was too late for that, or was it? What the man did not realize was that Jesus was still walking on the earth through the bodies of those who made up His church. Ultimately, that is what the church is, the life of Christ on the earth. Ephesians 1:20 says that the church is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all and all. When Peter and John stopped to speak to this man, he discovered that it wasn’t too late for him to have an encounter with Jesus after all. We are the body of Christ, and we owe the world an encounter with Jesus, and we are the only body He has in this earth through whom He can physically encounter and transform the lives of the hurting and broken. Every time Jesus touches a life, Heaven comes to earth, and that is our common assignment. We’re all given the assignment, regardless of the vocation, to be the body through which Jesus touches the lives of others and brings Heaven to earth, one person at a time.
