Be Their Healing

My mother was dearly beloved by her maternal grandfather, John K. Leigh, or so my grandmother told me. Doted over, actually, and perhaps a bit spoiled. Apparently, he gave her whatever she asked.

“There was one thing she wouldn’t ask for,” Mamma told me. “She really wanted a horse, but she knew he couldn’t give that to her, so she didn’t ask.”

Why? If he loved her that much wouldn’t he find a way to get her that horse?

Until today I thought this was a story of fear. The fear of a little girl who so needed to preserve a perfect relationship with her grandfather that she withheld her heart’s greatest desire. But today, I see it differently. I think mom was so in tune with her grandpa’s love for her that, when he came near, she no longer had this desire. She was satisfied.

God says ask. Yet, sometimes we don’t. Is it because we don’t think He’ll give it to us? Afraid He’ll turn us down? Afraid he’ll turn out not to be the God we thought He was?

I don’t think so. I think we don’t ask because we’re afraid of being chastised for wrong-requesting. How dare you ask when others are so much more in need? Don’t you realize I have bigger things to attend to? Or lack of trust: Don’t you know that I have everything in hand here?

OR do we fail to ask because, from a distance, we look to God and think, there’s really nothing to be done here. He can’t give me that horse. Better shelve it and stick to reasonable requests.

The thing is, God doesn’t want us to pray from a distance. He wants us to pray up close. So much so that He’s promised to be right there next to us. And in that proximity, the asking we had in mind from a distance changes. The please don’t let it be cancer. The please don’t let it be my child. The please don’t let it be terminal. The please let there be another way…those prayers meld into one: Lord, please be their healing.

And the Lord, ever so close, bends and whispers in my ear, I am.

Perhaps He was whispering it from afar, too, but I couldn’t hear Him. Healing may come now or later. It may be complete on this side of life or be completed in the hereafter. But it will come. In fact, it is come, because the Lord of life has said so.

Today I boldly pray without reservation, Lord, be their healing. He loves them that much.