One night my 11-year-old
daughter Eva noticed I was distracted as I tucked her in to bed. I told her
about a friend's teenage daughter whose hair was mysteriously falling out and
I encouraged Eva to pray for Amy. Her simple words, "Jesus, please hold
Amy's hair on her head," touched me.
As the doctors experimented with
different treatments, Amy continued to lose her hair. Eva continued to pray
the same prayer.
After six weeks the doctors
determined Amy had alopecia, an extremely rare disorder where hair loss is
unpredictable but can be complete and permanent. When I told Eva, she took my
hand and closed her eyes. This time her prayer was different. "Dear
Jesus, if you won't hold Amy's hair on her head, would you please hold
Amy?" Tearfully, I realized how sometimes God doesn't move mountains; he
moves us. -- Elisa Morgan in
Christian Parenting Today. Christian
Reader, Vol. 34.
Scripture Text:
Jer. 8:14 (NIV) "Why are we sitting here?
Gather together! Let us flee to the fortified cities and perish there! For the
LORD our God has doomed us to perish and given us poisoned water to drink,
because we have sinned against him. 15 We hoped for peace but no good has
come, for a time of healing but there was only terror. 16 The snorting of the
enemy's horses is heard from Dan; at the neighing of their stallions the whole
land trembles. They have come to devour the land and everything in it, the
city and all who live there." 17 "See, I will send venomous snakes
among you, vipers that cannot be charmed, and they will bite you,” declares
the LORD. 18 O my Comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me. 19 Listen
to the cry of my people from a land far away: "Is the LORD not in Zion?
Is her King no longer there?" "Why have they provoked me to anger
with their images, with their worthless foreign idols?" 20 "The
harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved." 21 Since my
people are crushed, I am crushed; I mourn, and horror grips me. 22 Is there
no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is there no healing
for the wound of my people?
A Desperate Situation:
Will we remember? Death
and dying are a part of life that we will never be able to overcome.
Disease and disaster have plagued humans since the fall in the Garden
of Eden. The Babylonians are
coming for the Judeans. Death was the only way we could enter back into a
relationship with the Lord after the fall.
Heb.
9:27 (NIV) Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face
judgment,
Rom.
6:23 (NIV) For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A Need for Help and
healing: We have been hurt.
We are in pain. We need
help. We need healing. We have been physically injured.
We have been wronged. We
have been abused and misused. The
enemies of life are coming. The
enemies rob us of our health, our happiness, and our life.
Will the hurt ever go away? Why
do I always seem to be in pain? These
enemies help us to see our need of a Savior.
1.
A need for physical healing (body).
We have been hurt and injured.
2.
A need for psychic healing (mind).
We have experienced loss in our
life.
3.
A need for spiritual healing (soul).
We have a need for hope for the
future.
A Balm in Gilead:
The balm in Gilead is the Lord Jesus Himself.
Jesus is our balm.
Jesus is our healing. Jesus
is our help. Jesus is our
healing.
Time is a healer.
Time that takes us away from each other, also brings back together
again with those who have gone on before us.
Will we look to the Lord? Will
we turn to Him for our help and healing?
He is the Lord and can heal what he has created.
Look to him and live.
Is.
53:4 (NIV) Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we
considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was
pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the
punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Death of the Lord was the only way it could be possible.
Job 19:25 (NIV) I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the
end he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been destroyed, yet
in my flesh I will see God;
Ezek.
47:12 (NIV) Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river.
Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will
bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will
serve for food and their leaves for healing."
Mal.
4:2 (NIV) But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise
with healing in its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released
from the stall.
Jer.
33:6 (NIV) "`Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it; I will
heal my people and will let them enjoy abundant peace and security.
Be whole in Christ.
Be healed in the name of the Lord.
Be touched by the Spirit of the one true living God who has healing in
his wings. Come to be touched by
the Lord and be healed of your diseases and hurts.
Let the Great Physician be your healer.
On Monday, August 9, 1993, a 31-year-old woman, Sopehia Mardress White,
burst into the hospital nursery at USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, wielding
a .38 caliber handgun. She had
come gunning for Elizabeth Staten, a nurse whom she accused of stealing her
husband. White fired six shots, hitting Staten in the wrist and stomach.
Staten fled, and White chased her into the emergency room, firing once more.
There, with blood on her clothes and
a hot pistol in her hand, the attacker was met by another nurse, Joan Black,
who did the unthinkable. Black
walked calmly to the gun-toting woman--and hugged her.
Black spoke comforting words. The
assailant said she didnt have anything to live for, that Staten had stolen her
family. "You're in pain," Black said. "I'm sorry, but everybody
has pain in their life... I understand, and we can work it out."
As they talked, the hospital invader
kept her finger on the trigger. Once she began to lift the gun as though she
would shoot herself. Nurse Black just pushed her arm down and continued to
hold her. At last Sopehia White gave the gun to the nurse. She was disarmed by
a hug, by understanding, by compassion. Black later told an AP reporter,
"I saw a sick person and had to take care of her." Jesus Christ
looks upon us in a similar fashion, as persons sick and broken inside, in need
of his care. And it is his embrace that disarms us.
-- Tom Tripp, Colusa, California.
Leadership, Vol. 15, no. 1.