Irony Becomes Her

Healing hits home

Part of believing in God -- and believing it is possible to know something about God -- is believing in miracles. It's a logical necessity of the distinction between, say, me and a Person who is so much greater that he belongs to a different order of being than I do.

There are certain rules to which I know I'm bound. No matter how my heart or my muscles strain upward, I can't soar like that hawk up there. No matter how hard I strive for perfection in my work, I will make errors. No matter how many precautions and preventive health measures I take, I will die. And most likely I will die "of" something.

These rules don't bind him. He made them. He can circumnavigate them.

Now that life-threatening disease is closer to me than it has yet been in my adult life, I have to think seriously about healing. I almost wrote "about what I think about healing," but what I think isn't nearly as important as what is true. In the case of a disease like cancer, even the strongest relativists couldn't allow much latitude for the truth. You either have cancer or you don't. It's either there or it's not.

Either you die or you don't. Yet.

Those who love my dad have offered much encouragement and a few suggestions for seeking healing. Some have recommended medical procedures, doctors, therapies, healthy habits. Some have said they were praying for immediate healing. And yesterday, one recommended a specific church in which numerous healings have been reported.

Why are the former so much easier to digest than the latter? Sure! Everybody should ask for healing! It doesn't hurt to ask, right?

I wouldn't know, because I keep forgetting to do it. In all my prayers for Mom, for Dad, for strength, courage, patience, faith, sensitivity, ministry, peace, joy -- how could I forget to ask for healing? Am I subconsciously afraid I will be disappointed?

Probably. I can't pray with confidence that complete and instant healing is what God intends to do in this situation; I've been more interested in the ways he's been changing us through the illness than in getting rid of it.

I admit the tip to go to a certain church for healing makes me a bit uneasy. It isn't because I don't believe God is sovereign and able to heal that I hesitate. It's because I do; but I know there are many he chooses not to heal and still more in which he allows medical treatment to work according to the rules he already set for the natural world. He is the one to choose, and I'm not. I've been turned off by the violent and overconfident healers of television and elsewhere, those who presume it is God's intention to do it as long as we go to the right place, say the right words, have the right person touch us.

And yet how many biblical characters were told to go to the right place, say the right words and have the right person touch them? Naaman and Saul/Paul come immediately to mind.

Am I too quick to say "but thy will be done" -- assuming that will is a "won't" in this case?

We've been led and guided in every other way, and Dad is still improving when I had thought his time was very short. Perhaps it's time to pray for that guidance in how to seek healing. And it wouldn't hurt to pray for healing itself.

posted by Lynn @ 4:44 AM