Healing’s joys and trials

Last Sunday’s healing meeting really tugged on the heart.

Proverbs 13:12 has real significance at times like these, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

We know what it’s like to hope for something today, and not receive it. We feel it was probably better not to have hoped at all. The pain and disappointment can make the brief flaring of hope seem worthless, or a dangerous lie. It would be easier, or safer, to not believe God can and will intervene in today’s troubles and pin our hopes in a future restoration only.

And yet, when this longing to be released from pain and physical torment is answered, we are made anew. Praise God that many on Sunday night can testify to God’s healing power being present. Some of the healing was at a heart level, with God showing his care and love beyond the physical. We praise Jesus for all of it. Every healing, in every form, brings glory to his name. Even healing through the medical profession is a common grace to humanity.

How then do we understand those who have not yet seen their healing? Why does God seem to heal some and not others? Is it God’s will that some would suffer and others be relieved?

The fact we wrestle with this mystery makes me admire anyone who is able to find the courage to dare seek his direct intervention and healing. Personally, I think it gives God as much glory as an obvious or immediate healing does. What faith this is. What simple trust in the goodness of the Father. Eventually, we will all take this faith with us to the grave, and be raised again according to it. After all, it is faith, hope and love that are eternal.