A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant bleeding. … She had heard about Jesus, so she came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” [Mark 5:25,27-28 (NLT)]
In Mark 5, we find three stories of miraculous healings: the demoniac living among the graves in the Gerasenes, the woman who bled for twelve years, and the daughter of Jairus who was brought back to life. These are beautiful stories, but what about all the other people in 2,000 years for whom there has been no healing? Like the woman with the blood disorder, my friend has suffered for more than twelve years, tried every remedy, and gotten no relief. This man of deep faith prays for healing as do all his family and friends. His faith is as strong as that of the nameless woman and yet he’s had no relief.
As the local synagogue’s leader, it’s likely Jairus was one of those in the synagogue who criticized Jesus for healing a man on the Sabbath. He even might have been with the Pharisees when they accused Jesus of being possessed by Satan. He and his daughter certainly weren’t more deserving than a neighbor’s grandson. Along with the child’s parents and countless others, they knelt before Jesus and begged for the boy’s healing. Nevertheless, in spite of their prayers and five-and-a-half years of treatment, healing never came. We didn’t ask God to raise him from the dead; we just wanted Eddie to live more than his brief eight years!
The bleeding woman and Jairus sought out the Lord but Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee and calmed a storm to reach the Gentile demoniac. My uncle was a good man of deep Christian faith but he descended into the hell of psychosis from which he couldn’t escape and, instead of living among the graves, he lived in a state psychiatric hospital. He desperately sought Jesus but, in spite of countless prayers for release from his demons, release only came when he died. Why was the pagan demoniac healed and not my uncle?
If all we needed for healing was sincere faith and fervent prayers, good Christians would never get sick or die—but, they do. Billy Graham suffered from Parkinson’s disease for 25 years and Martin Luther had 24 years of ill-health. Luther’s pain was so crippling that he frequently prayed for death’s relief. Based on existing records, forensic scientists believe Francis of Assisi suffered from malaria, tuberculosis, peptic ulcer, gastric cancer, brucellosis, blindness from trachoma, and leprosy until his death at 44. Among other ailments, John Calvin suffered from kidney stones, painful gout, heartburn and indigestion, chronic facial pain, roundworms, migraines, and chronic insomnia until his death at 55 (probably from tuberculosis). If anyone had a direct line to God’s ear, it would be men like these and the Apostle Paul. Without a doubt, they all prayed for relief but God chose not to remove their many thorns.
Although Jesus taught us that God will respond to our faithful prayers, He never taught us that faith automatically brings about healing. While there are many instances in Scripture where Jesus links faith and healing, there are many others where the healing seems almost random. When we look at His many miraculous healings, there’s no formula to them. In fact, Jesus’ healing seems unrelated to people’s faith. The man healed by the pool at Bethesda didn’t even know Jesus’ name. The only constant is Jesus rather than faith or prayer!
God can and does heal. Whether or not He does so is His sovereign choice and our physical healing may not be God’s top priority! Of the many sick and suffering people crowded around the pool in Bethesda, Jesus healed just one man. The reasons why God restores health to some and not to others is beyond our understanding. Healing is neither evidence of our faith nor proof of God’s love for us and we can’t allow bitterness or anger to fill our hearts when it doesn’t occur. Even for the most faithful, miraculous healings are the exception not the rule! Someday, all sickness and death will be gone but, until then, we must have faith and trust in God.
He has chosen not to heal me, but to hold me. The more intense the pain, the closer His embrace. [Joni Eareckson Tada]
When the woman joined our group at the table in the school gym, she said, “I got a late start so I was speeding to get here. If a cop stopped me, I was going to tell him I was doing the Lord’s work and, since God will forgive me, he should too.” She insisted that speeding for a godly purpose was a justifiable offense and, since God offers forgiveness, so should the police. Granted, we were doing God’s work by packing meals for the needy but, as the Blues brothers learned when they saved the orphanage, a mission from God is not a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.
One of the most disturbing stories in the Bible is found in Judges 11. Before leading the army into battle with the Ammonites, Jephthah made a rash vow to the Lord—if given victory, he’d make a burnt sacrifice of the first thing to come out of his house to meet him upon his return. God granted Israel victory but, when Jephthah returned home, it was his daughter who came out to greet him. When the anguished Jephthah told her of his vow, the girl willingly accepted her fate. She only asked for one thing—to go into the hills with her friends to mourn that she’d never marry or know the joy of motherhood. When she returned, “her father kept the vow he had made and she died a virgin.”
Like Christians, Hindus believe that, when the body dies, the soul does not. Unlike Christians, however, Hindus believe that, after death, the soul lives on in an astral body until it is reborn in another physical body. This cycle is continually repeated until the soul reaches a certain state of perfection (moksha) and is released from the bondage of birth and death. At that time, like a drop of water that eventually merges into the ocean, the soul will finally merge into God and become one with its creator. Of course, once absorbed by the sea, the drop would cease to exist.
While walking in the Botanical Gardens, I left my husband on a bench by the lake while I went back to get a few more photos of the plumeria. After getting my last shot, I returned to find him gazing out at the water. When I disturbed his reverie with a touch on the shoulder, he looked up and said, “I was just enjoying Him!” I knew exactly who he meant.
In a classic Peanuts comic (drawn by Charles Schulz), the meek Linus asked his bossy big sister Lucy, “Why are you always so anxious to criticize me?” She answered, “I just think I have a knack for seeing other peoples’ faults.” When Linus queried, “What about your own faults?” Lucy replied, “I have a knack for overlooking them.” Along with her over-sized ego, Lucy has what psychologists call “fundamental attribution error.”
Devotions of the Heart 