A "minor" miracle

Okay, so here's the additional story from last Saturday's Thai team "reunion" that I held off on sharing. You're not going to get the whole story here, because it involves some personal stuff from someone other than me, but I think I can share enough to make this worth writing about.

Anyhow, one of our team member's had shown up at the prayer gathering on crutches for a pretty badly sprained ankle. As the story goes, she had had a pretty significant ankle injury as a child that never got proper attention, and from time to time she has re-activated it. The most recent time had been a week prior to our meeting, but she hadn't realized ithat's what she had done t right away and had walked on it for 3 days, while it got worse and worse.

So, we went through our prayer gathering and our dinner meeting, and as we were wrapping up, she was sharing with Kris the story of her injury, and Kris said "Before we go, we need to pray for that." To which I was like, "Seriously, yeah, we should do that." It hit me that it never really occurred to me to do that, and I shared that feeling. Kris shared how in Thailand, she wouldn't hesitate to stop and pray for that, but that we just don't do that in the States, so she has to make a point of catching herself. It's that re-wiring I talked about a few days ago, and having to remember that it does apply here as well. Here in the States, for something like a sprained ankle, we pretty much tend to just say "Yeah, that stinks, I hope it gets better soon", and leave it at that, basically deciding that it's not something to bother God with. It's like it has to be something that we don't think we're capable of dealing with before we take it to God. I remember when I was in Thailand, I had a stomach issue later in the trip that had woken me up a couple nights and left me feeling unsettled. It was basically just a nuisance, but in no way debilitationg. I dealt with it for 2 days, and when I shared it with Lynn, he immediately wanted to pray for me (and did, despite my initial "oh, it's fine"), and wouldn't you know, I didn't have any more trouble with it. Again, in my mind, I had decided it wasn't important enough to take to God.

So anyhow, after we finished our meeting we went outside of the Hoss's, and the other 3 of us laid hands on her ankle and prayed for her. There's a longer story here which involves the personal details I don't feel comfortable sharing, but the short story is that when we were done, she removed the wrap she had on her ankle, and she walked to her car carrying her crutches, without the slightest limp. I saw her again today and she said that one day this week when she was on it all day, it had gotten a bit achy, but other than that, the pain had been completely gone.

I'm not sure that I remember ever being present at an immediate healing like that, but it was pretty amazing. I use the term "minor" miracle to describe it in the title because this was something so basic and simple that, as I said, most of the time we wouldn't even bother praying for healing for it. That's an attitude I'm re-evaluating at this point, by the way. And yet, in the truest sense, there's no such thing as a minor miracle, hence the quotes. When Kris shared with CrossWalk the Sunday before we left for Thailand, she shared a number of "minor" miracles that they have experienced in the village, and followed that by saying that if God can do those things, why can't he do those "major" things we're asking for? And I totally see that attitude and understanding firsthand.

You know, I've not been a "name it, claim it" guy, or someone who says that healing is only a matter of faith because God wants to heal everyone. And I'm still not - I think that God's ways are not our ways, and that physical healing is not in His design for every situation. However, that doesn't mean we can't ask in every situation, and ask with an expectation that He can and will answer. And, we can rest assured that, no matter how "minor" the ailment, He does care, regardless of whether His answer in the particular situation is an act of physical healing.