People were always trying to get to Jesus. Sometimes he had to get into a boat to teach the crowds. Sometimes he had to slip away before he got hurt. Sometimes people had to climb trees to see him. And one time, people cut a hole in a house just to get his help.

So many people were listening to Jesus preach that no one else could get into the house. But five men really, really, really wanted to see Jesus. One of the men could not walk—not with a limp, not with crutches, not at all. And no one had a wheelchair, so his four friends carried him on a little bed. They thought, “If we get to Jesus, maybe, just maybe, he will heal our friend.”

Getting to Jesus was going to be tricky. The house was full. The doorway was jammed with people. And Jesus didn’t have his cell phone turned on (because they hadn’t been invented yet!).

But the four men were determined. They got on to the top of the house and started taking apart the roof. Now those are good friends (unless it’s your house, I suppose)! They lowered the man down to Jesus, which didn’t make Jesus upset. It made him glad.

“Son,” Jesus said to the man who couldn’t walk, “your sins are forgiven.”

That may sound like a strange thing to say when the man was there for his legs, not for his sins. But Jesus saw that his faith was strong, even if his legs were weak. The man put all his trust in Jesus, and that’s all it takes for our sins to be forgiven.

You’d think that the crowd would start cheering and clapping for this happy news. But some of the scribes weren’t happy at all. “Only God can forgive sins,” they thought to themselves. “Who does this Jesus fellow think he is?”

Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking. And they were right—sort of. Only God can forgive sins. But they weren’t right about Jesus. He was no ordinary man. He was the God-man, and he could do things that only God can do. So he told the man, “Get up, take your bed, and go home.”

And you know what? That’s exactly what the man did. His faith was strong, and now his legs were too. He probably skipped all the way home. When the crowd saw what had happened, they were amazed and glorified God. “We never saw anything like this!”

And they hadn’t. But there was much more yet to be seen.