Prayer, Healing, and Hope

I read the Prayer Corner each week, when it comes from church.  So many names I know, but not all.  I underline special ones for whom I feel called to pray.  And I ask God to meet the need of each one as I put a mark beside, or underline their name.

It is always a great joy when I hear that someone is doing better, or is home from the hospital, or has been blessed with healing.

I have always believed in the power of prayer for healing.  I know that, for many and many a person, stunning direct healing has come when we have asked, believing.

I never left a hospital bedside, in my pastoral days, without laying a hand on the one in bed, and asking for their healing from God Who loves them.

There have been times when I needed healing.  One vivid time was when Molly and I were driving to Rochester's Mayo Clinic to see their eye specialist, Dr. Brubaker.  My numbers had soared from 11-12 to the low 20's - a bad sign for those of us with glaucoma.  I knew a little group of praying women had gathered back at church to hold me up in prayer.  I had been told that the way glaucoma was going I could be blind at 60 years of age.

To this day I do not know who all of the women were who had gathered to pray for me.  When we reached Dr. Brubaker's office in the mid-afternoon, and my eyes were tested, the numbers had dropped from the over-20's to 11 and 13 and in all the years since, they have never risen again!  While I did eventually lose the sight in my right eye, my left eye kept its low number and my vision, when last measured was at a perfect 20/20 .

There are other wonderful answers to prayer along the way.  When boils on my left leg were examined by my beloved dermatologist, a strange blood spot was noticed on my left foot.  "You have a melanoma there," he said.

A young surgeon received the news with grim face, but excised the melanoma, took skin from elsewhere to cover it, and finally went up my left leg to the groin, taking out two ranks of lymph nodes, finding the third rank clean.  That was all of 20 years ago.  I am so grateful, and praise God the Great Healer.  So many prayers!

In recent years, CLL or chronic leukemia has been discovered in my blood.  "We'll just watch it," another young specialist counseled.  "These low-level things sometimes go on many years, with no problem."  But now a set of swellings in the upper lymph system have appeared, a PET scan taken, and a biopsy.  While I wonder, without any word back yet, I have been led to great thanksgiving for my life, and these long years.  Of course I feel there "is more for me to do."  Prayer is still my great help.  And hope.

Molly has helped me to find peace as I await further knowledge.  I am eager to live my life at a new level, doing my Bible Study for now, reading books of good news for me, exercising as I can and working to be ready for that great going home that awaits all of us who love Jesus and believe His promises of heaven.

Should you pray for me, I ask your help in all these mysterious things, that I may be faithful, and have joy, and be "ready, ready, ready, when the time comes."

You are all so dear to me.  Thank you for our continuing partnership in the great Journey with Jesus.

Love you,
Arthur