Hoping for healing on a rainy day

As I drive to the pharmacy, a deluge of rain starts lashing the car windscreen, the wipers sloshing their way through a full speed workout.

I debate whether to wait in the car park but decide, instead, to make a mad dash for the entrance. Dripping wet, I shake out my umbrella and enter through steamed up glass doors, where I join the end of a long line of bedraggled people.

Up ahead, I notice a woman I know from the local Christian community, standing to one side, chatting with the dispenser. More a familiar stranger than a friend, her name is Jane. She is in her late sixties, softly spoken, gentle natured and, like me, wearing a sodden raincoat and holding an equally sodden umbrella.

As my spot in the snaking queue edges towards the counter, I call out her name and she turns. Her face speaks surprise, quickly replaced by recognition, followed by an uncharacteristic verbal venting of frustration.

“I’ve got a perforated ear drum, which normally gives me no bother,” she explains. “But my ear got infected last week, and now I’m struggling to hear.” She gestures towards the dispenser, who is busy scanning the shelves behind the counter, rammed with an eclectic assortment of medicines. “He’s trying to find some drops to remove the wax or whatever is blocking it,” she says.

We continue our conversation, Jane to one side, me in the queue, until I reach the front, where I am served with speed.

Jane is not so fortunate, with no medicines in stock that could help her.

But it means we leave the pharmacy at the same time and, in that moment, I feel an oh-so-familiar surge of courage-and-compassion rising up within me. I can only describe it as suddenly seeing her as I believe God sees her – fearfully and wonderfully made, absolutely beloved, in need of his healing.

Stepping outside, both of us bemoan the unseasonably wet weather, as we hold our umbrellas aloft in an attempt to stay dry. Doing my best to ignore the horizontal torrents bombarding my arm, I know what I need to do.

“Has anyone prayed for healing in your ear?” I ask her, keen to seize the moment before she runs for her car.

“No,” she says, pausing a moment. “No, they haven’t.”

I take a deep breath. “Would you like me to pray for you?” I ask, and then I clarify. “As in, would you like me to pray for you, right here , right now, in the rain?”

She looks surprised, but she doesn’t hesitate in agreeing. So I seek her permission, place my free hand over her ear, and pray a simple prayer, pronouncing healing for Jane, in Jesus’ name.

She has her eyes shut, so it’s difficult to gauge whether anything has happened. When she opens them, she smiles and simply says thank you.

As we part company and run towards our respective cars, eager to get out of the downpour, I find myself fending off an overwhelming sense of disappointment on my drive home: What was that all about Lord? Why did you prompt me to pray for her? Why didn’t you heal her?

All I hear is deafening silence.

***

A few weeks later, Jane and I cross paths again. This time she greets me with a grin of excitement and, as it’s a sunny day, we grab a seat together to catch up on what has happened since our rain-soaked encounter outside the pharmacy.

“After you prayed for me, I felt a kind of crackling in my ear, and I wasn’t sure what it was,” she tells me. “But I had a feeling it might be God up to something.”

About ten days afterwards, an old friend had invited Jane and her husband to join them for a Sunday service at a large Pentecostal Church, out of town. Fully aware that this might be unfamiliar territory for their Anglican sensibilities, they had decided to step outside their comfort zones and give it a go.

“It blew our minds,” she says. “It was such a contrast to our usual Sunday services.”

At the end of the service, the pastor had invited people to come for prayer by the stage at the front, especially if they were in need of healing. Initially reluctant, her husband had persuaded her to step forward.

“As soon as I did so, I knew I wouldn’t regret it,” she says.

A couple of people had prayed with her, inviting Jesus to heal her. “I immediately got the same sensation of crackling in my ear,” she says, “but I knew I was in the presence of God, so I just soaked it up.”

Oblivious to the passing of time, it was almost half an hour later when she returned to her seat. “It was then that I realised I could hear again properly,” she explains, before revealing that it’s been like that ever since. “I still can’t quite believe it,” she adds.

I am delighted.

Jesus has done it again.

***

How many of you are needing healing? What if, like Jane, God has decided to bring about your healing in incremental stages, rather than all at once? If this is you, how do you handle the tension that this creates, especially if you’re only partially along that pathway at the moment?

Or maybe you relate more to my small role in this story? What if, like me, you have obeyed a prompt to pray, prayed in faith in Jesus’ name, but then seen no immediate or obvious answer to your prayer? If this is you, how encouraged would you be if God were to show you that you have actually been one of several people who have prayed for that person’s healing?

As ever, constructive comments are welcome below.

Also, if you want to read another story about healing coming in incremental stages, you will find one here on my blog!

Photo by Alicja via Pixabay.