Healing In His Wings
BRYAN LONG, DIRECTOR OF CHURCH MULTIPLICATION
We have this chalkboard in our house that we write on to commemorate different seasons. We use it for first days of school, birthdays, special occasions. We typically do one for Advent to recognize a main theme of our family that year. This is what was drawn for this year…
It comes from my favorite Christmas carol “Hark the Harold Angel Sing.” You likely know the song, but perhaps you don’t know the background to the line: “Risen with healing in his wings…” We need go back to the book of Numbers. In chapter 15, it describes different ways God wanted Israel to worship Him. At one point God commands: “Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel. You will have these tassels to look at and so you will remember all the commands of the LORD, that you may obey them…” (vv. 37b-39a)
The Hebrew word for these coat corners is kanaph. God told his people to put tassels on the kanaph, on the fringe, of their garments. Since this was a command “throughout the generations to come,” Jewish people to this day wear these fringes. Jesus would certainly have been wearing them as well. In fact, in those day, people would make their fringes extra-large to show how religious they were. Jesus condemns the Pharisees for it: “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make…their fringes long.” Matthew 23:5
Now, in Malachi 4, which is the last prophet of Israel, in the last book of the Old Testament, in the last chapter: “The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the LORD of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who fear my name, the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings…” Malachi 4:1b-2a In Hebrew, the word for “wings” is the same word for those “garment corners.” The rabbis saw this connection. They read to put tassels on their kanaph and then read that the Sun of Righteousness would have healing in his kanaph. A belief developed that on the day that is coming, the Messiah would arrive with power to heal in the fringes of his garment, his kanaph, his wings… 400 years later, Jesus comes onto the scene and a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years reached out and touched Him. But she doesn’t just reach anywhere. She reaches for the fringe of His garments, which in Greek is the equivalent of kanaph! I always thought the woman was just reaching for any part of Jesus. But her actions were intentional. She was making a statement: “I believe You’re the one. You’re the Sun of Righteousness. You have healing in Your wings!” Jesus turns to her and says: “…your faith has healed you.”
As we walk by that chalkboard, my family clings to this hope at Advent. This will be the first Christmas without my father, who died suddenly this year. But we’ve all had a hard few years. We all know someone going through illness, disease, conditions, death. We’ve had to bury five senior saints at our church in the last 9 months.
The only way I’m not paralyzed with grief…
The only ability for joy…
The only hope we’ve got…
…is the child laying in a manger with “light and life to all he brings; risen with healing in his wings”
May you reach out and cling to Jesus this Christmas season.