Holy Hankies?

Holy Hankies?


God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that even handkerchiefs and aprons that had touched him were taken to the sick, and their illnesses were cured and the evil spirits left them.
Acts 19:11-12 New International Version


I’m sorry, Holy Spirit . . . .

I need to apologize to the Holy Spirit up front and confess my sin. My sin is that during the original writing for this verse, I was sarcastic. I was making a comical story over the unusual way God’s Spirit (or the Spirit of Jesus as He is called in Acts 16:7) moved and healed many. I made mention that it seemed silly that God would inhabit a napkin or a kerchief to bring healing to someone. I made mention of a religious program on television where they wanted you to mail in a cloth or hankie along with a small donation. The ministry would pray over the cloths and mail them back. And right at that point is when my sin started. I had this sly grin curling itself over my face. I could feel myself not believing that God would work this way. Idiotic ideas popped into my head like, “Does the hankie need to be cotton, or will polyester work? What if all I have is a ripped piece of denim off my jeans, will that suffice?” I was seeing this unusual move of the Spirit as silly and that is where the Holy Spirit convicted me.

I think my joking and attitude about this strange move of the Spirit was my putting down someone’s blessing. If you have mailed out your prayer cloths, and God has blessed you, well . . . , then bless you. If you say it was real, I believe you. It was certainly real for the people that God decided to bless in this situation with Paul. It was and is a unique circumstance. Paul and his crew may have been the only ones for miles that knew God, and this was a very special way for one man to reach a whole town or city. Even though this Holy Spirit endowed napkin thing is unique, I should not be shocked. Unique is nothing new for God. I remember other exceptional moves of God such as Elisha’s bones being filled with enough of God’s power that just a touch brought a man back to life (2 Kings 13:21) and how the Holy Spirit used Peter’s shadow as a healing device (Acts 5:15). I suppose this type of story is telling me that God can move any way He wants, when He wants. He heals so that we can know He sympathizes with our pain, having endured it himself while in the flesh. I think God healed (or heals) so that it acts as a supernatural sign for things to come . . . .

By the way, my knee hurts. Anybody got a hankie? I believe now.