A Prayer In Tough Times To Push Through With Faith In God's Goodness

Who of us isn’t longing for this pandemic to finally be over?  Various politicians are looking at schedules for relaxing social restrictions and more and more vaccinations take place. 

Some jurisdictions – like British Columbia where I live – is extending the time between the first and second doses of vaccines to 4 months as they try to get as many people vaccinated with some level of protection as quickly as possible.  We’re into our second year of this very strange time and it seems a very long time ago since things seemed “normal.”

Well, in a story from the life of Jesus in the Bible, we encounter a woman who has waited even longer for “normal” to return to her life of sickness and suffering and her desperation is clear and her faith in God’s goodness to do something in the middle of her desperate situation is even clearer.  If you are a regular reader of the Bible you will recognize this story:

A large crowd followed and pressed around him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” “You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”  Mark 5:24-34

It often seems challenging to me to know how to sort out two sides of what seems like a spiritual dilemma.  God loves us and promises to sovereignly work out His purposes in our lives, making choices as He knows best for us and loving us deeply through all the ups and downs of life in this broken world with sickness and death.  How do we put that alongside our need to come to Him in faith, asking God for healing – a willingness and ability Jesus so clearly demonstrated when He walked on this earth -- and yet which sometimes seems distant from us when we pray and nothing seems to happen.  So many questions about our faith, God’s willingness, what it means to pray in Jesus’ name …. The issues I’ve heard discussed in this regard over the years is endless and my own thoughts have gone down many routes over the years as well. 

I think it’s good to bring ourselves back to the place where this sick woman we just read about brought herself.  She’d done all she could for years and her condition did not improve.  While it might have seemed that God had abandoned her and was not paying attention to her, yet she didn’t give in to that.  When Jesus came to her village nothing was going to stop her from getting to him and her faith in God’s ability and willingness to meet with her was so strong that she was willing to just “touch his clothes” in faith to be healed. 

I pray that we will hold strong in our faith, as this woman did, and pray and keep on praying, ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking until that day that we understand everything.  I’m quite sure you and I will die some day and on that day still have plenty of questions. But when we wake up in the presence of Jesus, there will be an explanation that is more wonderful than we can ever understand today.  Let’s stir up our faith today and trust that God is who God says He is and God does all that he promises to do and keep on bringing all our needs and burdens to Him today, and leave all the rest there.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.  Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.  Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.  Trusting that You will make all things right if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

And Lord, help us to trust Your goodness, Your power, and Your presence with us and available to us today.  We surrender our need to know.  We surrender our need to have things happen in a particular way or on a particular day.  We know that You are good and good to us and that is enough.

On that basis we do come to You again today and ask for Your healing to sweep across our cities, our nations, and across the face of the earth and lift this cloud of disease that has plagued so many for so long.  Protect individuals from contracting the disease today.  Heal those who are in hospitals, even in ICU on ventilators.  Restore those who are classified as “long haulers.”  Increase immunity levels across our communities so grandparents can hug their grandkids again, people can gather together to worship and pray, and living and working in relationship with one another can be experienced without all the current social restrictions. 

We are coming to You, pushing through all the things that seem impossible, and longing to just touch You so Your healing power can flow in us, through us, and  we can live in the experience of  “Your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”   Our lives are in Your loving hands and there’s no better place to be today.  Along with so many whose lives are recorded for us in the Bible, we will trust You no matter what we see in this day, in this season, or even in our lifetime.  You are good.  You are God.  Our lives are in good hands. Amen