A Prayer for Healing

A few days ago, I received the hard news that a beloved friend was just given a stage 3 cancer diagnosis.  He has good doctors, so there are reasons for hope, and he is even ornerier than I am, so he's not going anywhere without a fight.  But news like this reminds us that life is fragile and that, sooner or later, this is a battle we all lose.

As if on cue, my recent morning readings reinforced this message.  On Thursday, I read this in Psalms: "So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart."  (90:12)  On Friday, I encountered this plaintive cry in Job: "Let me alone, for my days are a breath."  (7:16)

We know these realities: that life is short and that death is certain.  In my faith, we embrace an additional reality: that death is not final.  I have great confidence in this principle.  I have seen too much evidence of grace and rebirth to believe otherwise.

But there is a psychological reality at work here, too.  I want my loved ones to stick around.  I want as many days with them in this life as I can get.

So whenever news like this comes my way--and I think I've gotten my fair share of it--I find myself earnestly and eagerly praying to God that this person I love will be healed.  I ask others to join me in this prayer.  I do it every time, and I am doing it this time.

I do it even though I have serious questions about its intellectual and theological coherence.  After all, I believe that God brought order out of chaos; that order means the universe functions according to certain laws; and that those laws sometimes play out in terrible and tragic ways.  In this sense, my prayer is a petition for a departure from the laws of nature.

I believe that God does sometimes override those laws.  Those are the things we call miracles.  But I know that God cannot offer up a miracle every time somebody wants one.  That would be a return to a kind of chaos.

In my view, miracles are the business of God and God alone and I cannot hope to understand when or why they will occur.  My petitioning is therefore either pointless (because God already has a miracle afoot) or presumptuous (because God has other plans).  So my head says: this prayer doesn't make any sense.  But my heart says: pray it anyway.

Over the years, though, this prayer has changed form.  Long ago, I prayed that my loved one would recover and would be healthy again.  But I have come to believe that this is too narrow an understanding of healing.  So, these days, my prayer sounds different.

I now pray that my loved one might know and feel the presence of God.  I believe that, on some occasions, this will mean that God will chase the illness away, my loved one will physically improve, and I will have more time with them.  I am praying and hoping for a miracle, and I have been blessed to witness more than a few of them.

But this form of healing prayer has broader implications as well.  My faith teaches me that, if someone can know and feel the presence of the living and loving God, then they are already healed.  They are healed regardless of what their test results show.  They are healed regardless of predictions and prognoses.  They are healed regardless of what else happens on this side of the door to immortality.

It is perhaps ridiculous to place rankings on blessings.  But I think that this broader sense of healing is actually more important than the miraculous sense.  After all, the miracle simply adjourns an appointment that all of us must ultimately keep--we are nowhere told that Lazarus lived forever.

In contrast, knowing and feeling the presence of God is a healing that follows us to the end of this life and into the next.  It follows us to that place where God, like the father to the Prodigal Son, runs to embrace us, to welcome us home, and to celebrate the end of all those things from which we have prayed we might be delivered and of which we have prayed we might be healed. 

It is a healing that follows us, that stays with us, forever.

And forever.

And forever.

Amen.