I didn't want to be there in the first place
I didn't ask to be taken there
All I know is one minute I'm lying on my pallet in my usual place
And next moment I'm on top of someone's house
These four guys hacking away at the roof
They told me the guy inside was some kind of guru
He was going to make me walk
And I thought, "Oh yeah"
Well, they finally got the hole big enough
So they tied ropes to the corners of the pallet
And started to lower me down
Now up to this point, I'm pretty casual about all this
That was one of the first things you learn to be
When you find your different
Casual
But as soon as I was in the room
All that changed
First of all, my whole being felt alive
Even parts of me that had been crippled all my life
I could feel
I remember flexing my calf muscle
I knew something was happening that I had no control over
I remember this overriding feeling of absolute horror
And just wanting to get out of there
I yelled out to my friends to pull me up
But they just had these stupid smiles on their faces
And just kept lowering me down
I felt betrayed
Part of me was panicking
But I knew part of me felt relieved
Through all of this
All I could think of was my sin
My sin
I barely knew what the word meant
I probably only heard it twice in my life
And there it was flashing across my mind
My sin
By now I was on the floor
People all around
But I could only see him
And I knew I never met him before
But I had this feeling that I'd been hurting him a long time
Like I'd molested his children or something horrible
Something I couldn't let him do
I wanted to turn away
But there was nowhere I could look without staring straight into his eyes
And even when I closed mine
I'd still see his
All I could feel was fear
I knew that the first word that come from his mouth
Would mean death for me
He could have said anything
But I knew it would be enough
But why me
I didn't even know this guy
Why should I feel like this
How can he stand here and accuse me of something I didn't know nothing about
Look, I'm a cripple
How much sin can a cripple commit
I'm flat on my back all day
I'm just a beggar
What about those who kill and rape?
Why don't you go and stare at them?
I closed my eyes
Dropped my head foreward
Waited for the axe to fall
Then he spoke
He said
Take courage, my son
Your sins are forgiven
He could have taken my life
He could have spoken the very words that would have meant my death
But he tells me instead that my sins are forgiven
That I am forgiven
And at that moment, the whole meaning of forgiveness pours over me
I must have looked ridiculous sitting there
Bawling my eyes out
But I don't think anyone saw me
Because after he spoke
The room was in an uproar
Everyone was yelling at once
He spoke other words at the time
But not to me
All I knew was that my sins were forgiven
I felt completely free
Completely clean
He looked over to me again and said
Rise, take up your pallet and go home
And I did
I didn't think twice about it
I just did it
Some people were calling it a miracle
But it didn't seem that way to me
It just felt like nature obeying his voice
It wasn't a request
It was an order
A command
And as I walked home that night
I wasn't thinking, "Wow, I can walk"
But, "My sins are forgiven"
And when the guys who lowered me to the ground
Caught up with me
All I could tell them was that my sins were forgiven
And today when people see me walking and say
"Look, there's the miracle man"
You walk
I say, "No, it was no miracle"
"Here's the miracle"
"My sins are forgiven"