Meet Me at Simon's House
When 48 Hours Are All You Have: The Power of Simon's House
What would you do if you had 48 hours left to live?
Not in the abstract, philosophical sense where you sketch out a bucket list and imagine yourself skydiving or finally booking that trip abroad. But in the raw, pressing, unavoidable sense. You know the number. The clock is already moving. The question is not whether it ends. The question is how you spend what remains.
It is a question worth sitting with, because the answer reveals something that no personality test or self-help framework ever could. It reveals what actually matters to you. Not what you say matters. Not what you post about or preach about or perform for the benefit of everyone watching. What actually, genuinely, deeply matters.
And if you want to understand the answer at its most profound level, look at what Jesus did with his final 48 hours.
The Choice That Changes Everything
The chief priests and scribes were already plotting. Passover was two days away. The crowds that had laid palms at his feet and shouted Hosanna had gone quiet. The weight of what was coming was no longer a distant shadow. It was right there, pressing in. And with all of that bearing down on him, Jesus made a deliberate, intentional choice about where to go and who to be with.
He went to the house of Simon the leper.
Not a palace. Not the home of a prominent religious leader. Not a place of power or prestige. He went to the home of a man who had spent most of his life on the outside of the city walls, labeled, marginalized, and defined by a condition that society refused to stop associating with him even after his healing.
Mark 14:1-3 places Jesus at that table, in that house, in what amounts to the final stretch of his earthly life. And the fact that he chose to be there, with Simon, is not a minor detail. It is the entire sermon.
They Still Called Him the Leper
Here is something the text does not stop to explain but absolutely demands that you notice. If Simon were still afflicted with leprosy, there would be no dinner party. No gathering. No table to sit at. The law required that he remain outside the city and cry out to warn anyone who approached him. The fact that people were gathered at his house tells you everything: Simon had been healed.
But they still called him Simon the leper.
He was walking in his restoration. He was living proof of what God can do. And yet the label followed him. The old condition still attached itself to his name like something that refused to let go.
This is not an ancient problem. It is a thoroughly modern one. People who have done the work, who have been transformed, who have let God rebuild them from the inside out, still find themselves being identified by who they were rather than who they have become. The world has a long memory for failure and a short one for redemption.
But here is what matters: Jesus still came to his house. The stigma did not stop him. The label did not deter him. He looked past what they called Simon and saw who Simon actually was, a man who had been through something devastating and was still standing. Still hosting. Still showing up.
That ought to tell you everything about the kind of God we serve.
What Scars Actually Prove
Harriet Tubman was struck in the head by a two-pound metal weight as a teenager, a blow that caused narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She could fall asleep without warning, mid-sentence, mid-step, in the middle of leading people through the darkness toward freedom. And she made 19 trips back into the South anyway. She led more than 300 people out of slavery. She planned every route and navigated every danger while carrying a wound that never fully healed.
The scar that should have disqualified her became the backdrop of her greatest work.
What Simon carried at that table was not just a testimony of healing. It was a testimony of survival. And those two things are not always the same. Some wounds leave marks even after the affliction is gone. Some seasons of life leave evidence that does not simply disappear once you come through to the other side.
And yet, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and showed them his hands. He kept the scars. He could have appeared in a body with every mark of the crucifixion erased, but he did not. He showed them the evidence. He let Thomas touch the wounds. Because the scars were not a mark of defeat. They were a mark of redemption. They were proof that he had been through something real and was still standing.
Your scars carry the same testimony. The things you have survived, the seasons you have endured, the wounds that left their mark, they are not things to be ashamed of. They are evidence. And that evidence is not just for you. It was meant to be shared with others who are still in the middle of what you have already come through.
Find Your Simon, Be Someone's Simon
There is a specific kind of person that Jesus was drawn to in that final stretch. Not the impressive. Not the well-connected. Not the ones who showed up once the tide had turned and it was finally safe to be nearby. He was drawn to the ones who had been through something. The ones whose lives carried the evidence of survival. The ones who did not need him to perform or produce or hold himself together for their comfort.
Those are Simon people.
A Simon person is the name you land on when you scroll past all the impressive contacts in your phone. They are the one you call not because of what they can do for you, but because of who they have always been to you. They show up without needing you to explain why you need them. They do not require the circumstances to be comfortable before they walk through the door. They have carried their own weight, and that is precisely what qualifies them to stand with you in yours.
The harder question, the one that deserves an honest answer, is not just whether you have a Simon. It is whether you are one.
Because in order to find that kind of person, someone has to be willing to be that kind of person. Someone has to come to terms with who they actually are, scars and all, and be open enough to let others see it. Not the curated version. Not the performance. The real thing.
Opening yourself up will bring you more than it takes from you. It creates the conditions where God can bless you, sometimes through the most unexpected hands, in the most unexpected places, at a table you almost did not sit down at.
The woman with the alabaster jar knew where to find Jesus because he was exactly where someone real would be. And what she brought to that table, she could only bring because he was there to receive it.
Be real enough to be found. Be brave enough to be a Simon. And watch what God does with the space that kind of honesty creates.
What would you do if you had 48 hours left to live?
Not in the abstract, philosophical sense where you sketch out a bucket list and imagine yourself skydiving or finally booking that trip abroad. But in the raw, pressing, unavoidable sense. You know the number. The clock is already moving. The question is not whether it ends. The question is how you spend what remains.
It is a question worth sitting with, because the answer reveals something that no personality test or self-help framework ever could. It reveals what actually matters to you. Not what you say matters. Not what you post about or preach about or perform for the benefit of everyone watching. What actually, genuinely, deeply matters.
And if you want to understand the answer at its most profound level, look at what Jesus did with his final 48 hours.
The Choice That Changes Everything
The chief priests and scribes were already plotting. Passover was two days away. The crowds that had laid palms at his feet and shouted Hosanna had gone quiet. The weight of what was coming was no longer a distant shadow. It was right there, pressing in. And with all of that bearing down on him, Jesus made a deliberate, intentional choice about where to go and who to be with.
He went to the house of Simon the leper.
Not a palace. Not the home of a prominent religious leader. Not a place of power or prestige. He went to the home of a man who had spent most of his life on the outside of the city walls, labeled, marginalized, and defined by a condition that society refused to stop associating with him even after his healing.
Mark 14:1-3 places Jesus at that table, in that house, in what amounts to the final stretch of his earthly life. And the fact that he chose to be there, with Simon, is not a minor detail. It is the entire sermon.
They Still Called Him the Leper
Here is something the text does not stop to explain but absolutely demands that you notice. If Simon were still afflicted with leprosy, there would be no dinner party. No gathering. No table to sit at. The law required that he remain outside the city and cry out to warn anyone who approached him. The fact that people were gathered at his house tells you everything: Simon had been healed.
But they still called him Simon the leper.
He was walking in his restoration. He was living proof of what God can do. And yet the label followed him. The old condition still attached itself to his name like something that refused to let go.
This is not an ancient problem. It is a thoroughly modern one. People who have done the work, who have been transformed, who have let God rebuild them from the inside out, still find themselves being identified by who they were rather than who they have become. The world has a long memory for failure and a short one for redemption.
But here is what matters: Jesus still came to his house. The stigma did not stop him. The label did not deter him. He looked past what they called Simon and saw who Simon actually was, a man who had been through something devastating and was still standing. Still hosting. Still showing up.
That ought to tell you everything about the kind of God we serve.
What Scars Actually Prove
Harriet Tubman was struck in the head by a two-pound metal weight as a teenager, a blow that caused narcoleptic episodes for the rest of her life. She could fall asleep without warning, mid-sentence, mid-step, in the middle of leading people through the darkness toward freedom. And she made 19 trips back into the South anyway. She led more than 300 people out of slavery. She planned every route and navigated every danger while carrying a wound that never fully healed.
The scar that should have disqualified her became the backdrop of her greatest work.
What Simon carried at that table was not just a testimony of healing. It was a testimony of survival. And those two things are not always the same. Some wounds leave marks even after the affliction is gone. Some seasons of life leave evidence that does not simply disappear once you come through to the other side.
And yet, after the resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples and showed them his hands. He kept the scars. He could have appeared in a body with every mark of the crucifixion erased, but he did not. He showed them the evidence. He let Thomas touch the wounds. Because the scars were not a mark of defeat. They were a mark of redemption. They were proof that he had been through something real and was still standing.
Your scars carry the same testimony. The things you have survived, the seasons you have endured, the wounds that left their mark, they are not things to be ashamed of. They are evidence. And that evidence is not just for you. It was meant to be shared with others who are still in the middle of what you have already come through.
Find Your Simon, Be Someone's Simon
There is a specific kind of person that Jesus was drawn to in that final stretch. Not the impressive. Not the well-connected. Not the ones who showed up once the tide had turned and it was finally safe to be nearby. He was drawn to the ones who had been through something. The ones whose lives carried the evidence of survival. The ones who did not need him to perform or produce or hold himself together for their comfort.
Those are Simon people.
A Simon person is the name you land on when you scroll past all the impressive contacts in your phone. They are the one you call not because of what they can do for you, but because of who they have always been to you. They show up without needing you to explain why you need them. They do not require the circumstances to be comfortable before they walk through the door. They have carried their own weight, and that is precisely what qualifies them to stand with you in yours.
The harder question, the one that deserves an honest answer, is not just whether you have a Simon. It is whether you are one.
Because in order to find that kind of person, someone has to be willing to be that kind of person. Someone has to come to terms with who they actually are, scars and all, and be open enough to let others see it. Not the curated version. Not the performance. The real thing.
Opening yourself up will bring you more than it takes from you. It creates the conditions where God can bless you, sometimes through the most unexpected hands, in the most unexpected places, at a table you almost did not sit down at.
The woman with the alabaster jar knew where to find Jesus because he was exactly where someone real would be. And what she brought to that table, she could only bring because he was there to receive it.
Be real enough to be found. Be brave enough to be a Simon. And watch what God does with the space that kind of honesty creates.
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