14Now when Jesus had come into Peter's house, He saw his wife's mother lying sick with a fever. 15So He touched her hand, and the fever left her. And she arose and served them.
This is a very brief description of another healing. Jesus had healed many already and I was trying to understand why this one was singled out as one worth mentioning individually, especially when there weren't many details to give. Yes, Jesus could heal the fever, He could do it with just a touch to her hand, and the healing was immediate and thorough enough that she was immediately able to get up and serve them. Is that all this text was meant to portray?
But maybe it was included here to show that no matter how we approach Jesus, He knows our problems and wants to take care of them for us. In Matthew 4:24 it says they brought to Him all the people who were sick and suffering. In Matthew 8:2, a leper came to Him himself and asked to be cleansed. In Matthew 8:5, a centurion came to him to plead for someone else who wasn't even present. Now Jesus entered Peter's house and saw that Peter's wife's mother was ill and healed her. From the way it is worded, I don't think Jesus was brought to the house in order to heal his mother-in-law, but that no one asked for her to be healed, and yet Jesus healed her when He saw her.
Or maybe Matthew included this healing simply because it is a story closer to one of his friends, a story about one of his fellow apostles, Peter. Jesus helped strangers and friends alike.
But the thing that strikes me the most about this story is the same thing that amazed me when I read about this in the book of Mark: the apostles still had a somewhat normal life! I had always thought of these guys being called in the middle of a day of work, fishing, and then following Jesus wherever He went. I had thought that was the end of any kind of normal life for them. I assumed they left family and friends behind. But here I find that Peter is married, since he has a mother-in-law, and that they stopped in at Peter's house! Did they stop in to visit Peter's family very often? Did Peter still live at home in between trips with Jesus on the preaching circuit? These guys still had a somewhat normal life!
And the other thing I was surprised about when I read this same story in Mark, was it always bugged me that it said she arose and served them. It just seems like it is saying Jesus healed her so they could be served. That didn't seem right to me. That doesn't fit in with the way I understand Jesus at all. But then it dawned on me the presence of the maternal instinct that seems to be in all women: when you have guests, feed them. What mother, grandmother, or mother-in-law hasn't welcomed guests to their home by putting out food for them, even if their guests have just eaten before arriving? You've seen this instinct in other women, haven't you? You know, the grandmother who puts out 5 kinds of cookies, cakes, cheese and crackers, bread and jelly, all for an afternoon snack. Or when visiting a home of a family whose cupboards are almost bare, the woman of the house still gets out something to share with the guests. Women seem to do this not out of frustration that now there is more work to do, but out of joy of having a way to make her guests more comfortable. I think Peter's mother-in-law also did this out of joy and not of demand. It is great to have health and energy, and it is great to be able to share the family's bounty with guests! She served them because she wanted to.
Serving others is not demanded of us. But serving others should be the natural response to our own joy in the many blessings God has given us. No matter how we approach God with our problems, He knows of them and wants to shoulder our burdens for us. God has touched our hearts, He has made our problems insignificant, in our joy we should arise and serve others too.