The healer

When we are told ,  “…in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil 4:6) we know it makes sense, perhaps by faith or experience and yet can become forgetful and rely instead on our own understanding, perhaps it’s part of our terminal independent streak

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A few months ago I woke up with a sore thumb. The knuckle was stiff and it was painful to move. Either google or Facebook led me to believe that it might be arthritis or gout and I should drink plenty of water. It didn’t work. So I took the unusual step of visiting the doctor, who prescribed some pills. They didn’t work either. After many months it dawned on me that I had not really mentioned it in my prayers so my wife got a bottle of blessed oil and prayed over my thumb for healing.

At this point I would have been quite satisfied with a common or garden complete miraculous healing of the pain and symptoms.

After the prayer it was still sore. So I figured I would have to carry this cross a little further and we went out for a walk. Or perhaps I should say we were led by the Spirit, because the Lord had a much more spectacular healing in mind.

To escape the searing heat of summer we soon ducked into an air conditioned shopping centre and strolling through its endless corridors walked up to a Pizza restaurant I had never been in. We usually avoid all fast-foods but before you could say cholesterol, we were locked in to its tractor beam and found ourselves seated in front of two freshly baked pizzas. It was, without exaggeration, the most delicious pizza I have ever tasted, heavenly. But the full significance of this event was not revealed until the next morning.

When I awoke and tried to wiggle my fossilized thumb, it was pain free, no longer stiff, with a full range of movement again. The Divine Physician had written out his prescription “take 2 pizzas and call me in the morning” which of course I did; to thank Him. The pain never returned.

It was a really funny answer to prayer but when you think about it, whilst doctors have a certain generalized knowledge of how the body works and its various malfunctions; only God has the big picture and He knew what vitamin or mineral or other ingredient was missing from my system that a pizza could replenish. How much more then can He provide solutions to all our needs if we entrust them to Him in prayer.