A Healer

One of the many facets about our God with which I am very unfamiliar is his role as our Healer. I know God (or at least I say I do) as Redeemer, Justifier, Sanctifier, Lord, Savior, for these facets are well-preached and well-discussed in American evangelical circles, which is absolutely essential to our faith. But I am seeing some things on this side of the border that are surprising me about another facet of our Lord’s person: his power to heal.

Now, I’m not an expert on healing. In fact, being turned off to the idea by some of the extremes of “healing ministries” that romp around the world, wowing folks with miracles but bearing no real fruit, I’ve often avoided the subject. I know that Christ healed multitudes, I know miraculous healings took place in the Bible, and I’m confident in the biblical principle that God is a healer. But in regards to seeing it happen today, I’ve been a little sketchy until recently.

Maestra Ceci is one of the Physical Education teachers here at the school. I love watching her run around with the little kindergarteners, playing games all over the courtyard. She’s in the middle of doing a distance education program to get her bachelor’s degree, even though she’s forty-something years old. She takes the bus to school every day, because she can’t afford a car. Her unbeliever husband divorced her suddenly last spring, and her two college-age children are living lives away from God. Needless to say, her life isn’t easy.

But things didn’t get much easier in April when she found out that a cyst had developed on her womb and had become large enough that the doctor told her he had to operate and remove it soon, before it caused her any harm. I’m not a woman, but I imagine that this would not be a very fun operation. She began the process of scheduling the operation, putting the date sometime in May.

She told her immediate friends and through word of mouth, various groups of believers began to pray for her: a small group of women, a special speaker lady who came to the church in April prayed specifically for her, and a group of young people I was privileged to be a part of went to her house and prayed for her there.
She went back to see the doctor one last time before the operation, and after examining her, found no cyst whatsoever. Her womb was perfectly whole.

Crazily enough, almost the same thing happened with another lady in the congregation, a sweet-smiling woman named Anabel. Her womb became infected somehow, and an operation was necessary. The Body began to pray for her, and what do you know? No more infection. Perfectly whole womb.

And if that wasn’t enough, my friend Omar’s mom, a pistol of a woman named Betty, has had bone-eating cancer for about 2 years now. She’s undergone chemo, and wears a scarf every day to adorn her hairless head. I forget the exact kind of cancer she has, but it’s caused her bones to weaken to the point of being able to break with just a little pressure. But, after the constant prayers of the church, the usually serious doctor gleefully greeted her at her last checkup, telling her that something happened in her body to cause her bones to become much stronger now.

I’m not a real big fan of the whole idea of “faith-ing” your way into healing and wholeness. I think that idea can get really dangerous, treating God as the path to the good life and totally bypassing his person. But isn’t the other extreme of unbelief just as perilous? I think I’m beginning to learn a little from these fellow disciples: God loves to heal as an expression of his goodness to us, the end of which is a robust glorifying of his name, our Healer.