When God Doesn't Heal (A Guest Post by Emily Wierenga)

It's a gift to have Emily Wierenga writing here today. Every Thursday, Emily hosts an online community of artists at her blog, Imperfect Prose. Emily is a creator, and she writes heavy and beautiful, all wrapped up together. She lives in Canada, where she creates a sweet life with her wonderful husband and their two amazing little boys.

The wind blows and dry grass rustles, and I run, to the applause of a thousand feeble hands. They’re clapping in the wind. And it’s the applause of the saints.

And I think of my mother in law, bowing low on her parent’s farm as a healer from Africa prayed over her, that God would take the cancer. And one week later it was still there, doctors said, and now, pre-cancerous cells too, and chemo, and I run fast down the asphalt, cold wind blowing.

I know the unanswered prayer well, Mum sick for eight years with a tumor that stole her mind. And what are the right words? Is there a perfect prayer?

My shadow stares up at me from the asphalt and what if all we can see are shadows? What if our bodies are completely sick—all spiritual and physical cancer?

And maybe this; maybe God sees it all? Shadows and light. Maybe he sees the entire sickness, the spiritual and the physical. Just as the pre-cancerous cells were invisible save for a microscope, so is spiritual cancer… and he sees it all.

He let Lazarus die so he might raise him from the dead. He forgave the sins of the man lowered through the roof before healing his body. He heals that which hurts us most. And maybe in this way, maybe he isn’t letting us down at all. Maybe, just maybe, we can still trust him.

The grass is dried out and brittle. It is many blades, and the many—all sick and dried and dying—lean on each other in the wind and together, they sound like hands, clapping. 

And this, the greatest worship: when we lean, brittle bones against each other, and let the spirit move us.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.Hebrews 12:1