A few years ago, I experienced excruciating pain one night! I swallowed painkillers, tried a hot massage, placed ice on my shoulder and arm but the ache refused to go. It came in spasms and my wife watched in dismay as I grimaced with every new attack. I hardly slept.
“Take away the pain!” I prayed aloud the next morning. But the pain was still there and I did some tests. The phone rang later, it was my wife calling from the hospital. “Bob,” she said, “I think I know what’s causing the pain. It’s uric acid. Just showed my colleagues your blood reports and they agreed.”
I put down the phone and looked up, “I understand God,” I said, “why did you not heal the pain immediately! It was the symptom of something bigger you wanted me to check and handle!” We all cry for something or other to God every day, don’t we? Sometimes, it is a relief from illness or disease. Or maybe” A cry for love? A cry for caring? A prayer for a new job? We then wonder why our prayer isn’t answered. Could it be we are asking for a cure for the symptom, whereas God wants us to search and look hard for the disease?
A mother in law who feels she is ill treated at home, and prays everyday for more love from her daughter in law, could she be asking for relief from the symptom? Could the disease be that she herself lacks giving or expressing love? The unemployed man who has tried every prayer in the book for employment could actually be having a laziness disorder or that of inconsistency or lack of persistence. When he realizes and starts building character into himself, healing arrives!
The middle-aged woman with a cervical collar round neck and with the pain of spondylosis could be carrying unresolved anger. An anger which could fester in her, till with ulcer or heart failure she succumbs. She sorts out that anger, maybe learns to forgive, and festering stops, and pain vanishes! A student failing his or her exams, despite spending hours praying for success might begin with concentrating on more effort or a change in the method of studying.
I wondered as I drove back yesterday how easy it would be if there were only green lights at every junction. And yet what a catastrophe it would be. We would sail through the lights into and onto other cars and into major accidents.
We need the red lights, because they warn us of problems ahead, just as we need the pain and illnesses and adverse circumstances to warn us of a lurking disease. The uric acid problem was cured and today I thank God for symptoms which are miracles towards healing..!
