One of the
notable movies of 2014 was Universal’s The
Theory of Everything. The film followed the life of Stephen and Jane
Hawking from when they first met in Cambridge in 1964, through Stephen’s
subsequent academic successes and his increasing disability. He was diagnosed
with motor-neuron disease (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) at 21 and
was not expected to live past 25. Born in 1942, he is now 73 years old. He uses
a motorized wheelchair and “speaks” through a computer-driven voice. He was
able to find a “way out” of the prison his disease and body put him in.
While many
people do not have the resources available to Stephen, great advances have been
made in helping people live and deal with, and even conquer, the confines placed
on them by disease, impairment or accident. We live in a truly remarkable
world!
Of course,
many others still struggle with the limitations of life. Trapped in situations
of birth, disease, accident or prisons of their own making, they face each day with
little or no hope. How can things ever get better for them? “I never get a
break” is a phrase many have repeated throughout their life.
No sound, no voice,
no hope — part 1
In our
scripture today, we see Jesus face-to-face with a man whose life could be
summed up in six words: no sound, no voice, no hope. Jesus was traveling near
the country of the Gerasenes, where he had previously healed a demoniac. That
man had “[begun] to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him;
and everyone was amazed.”1
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