Have you ever wished you could wave a magic wand and change a situation?
Have you ever wished you had a supernatural ability to somehow bend the ear of God and cause him to act in the way you want?
Have you ever wished you could just lay your hands on someone and have them healed, the way Jesus did? The way his apostles did?
I do.
And, judging by the way I sometimes here others pray, they do to. I have heard people plead, beg, demand, insist. I have heard them declare, promise, and decree. I have heard them whimper and shout, pray in words I understood and in words no one could, pray with conviction and contrition and compassion. I've heard it.
And what I see is that sometimes God heals and answers and moves. And sometimes he doesn't.
I have no intention of talking about prayer and how it works, about faith or healing or giftings or anything like that. But I got to thinking the other day, What if God really did give me, say, the gift of healing? Awesome, right?
Or, maybe, not so awesome.
Because I started to think about my own life. I thought about how I have learned and grown and fallen more deeply in love with Jesus through the struggle. Every struggle has been one I resisted and prayed against. Who wants to go through pain? And some of it has been tremendous pain indeed. If I had had the power to change it at the beginning, I would have. I know I would have. I would have waved the prayer wand and made the hurt go away.
But here's the crazy thing: when I look back, I wouldn't change it. If my today-self could somehow travel back in time and stay or move the hand of God at the points of my greatest struggle, if God said to me, "Shall I do it differently?" knowing what I know today, and the good that has come from the struggle, and how the struggle has refined and strengthened my relationship with Him, I would go through it again. Because I would rather go through the pain and know my Jesus more than to be rescued from the pain and miss out on knowing him as fully.
So I think, What if I had the gift of healing, what if I could wave my wand and make God move, and in so doing, I somehow robbed someone of the blessing, yes, the blessing of their pain? What if someone had seen me struggle and had prayed, "Oh, Lord, don't let her have to go through that," and poof, he made it so, and in so doing, I never got to know him the way I do? What if I did that to someone else?
It strikes me that my wanting to be able to wave my prayer wand reveals at its heart a distrust of the heart and motives of God. I think I must know better. I think that this suffering another is going through can't possibly be turned to good. The suffering that I am going through can't possibly be redeemed. It has no value. It should simply stop. Clearly, I know this, but God missed the memo. I begin to think that maybe this evil in my life is something God has not willed. That's a tempting direction to go. It can't possibly be God's will, right? Well, it isn't God's will in the sense that it falls within his moral will. But if I am going to take seriously the sovereignty of God, I have to accept that the bad things that happen in my life aren't just things that he "allows" but that he "wills". To suggest that he simply "allows" them is to suggest that the evil is sort of a Plan B which he'll work around if he absolutely has to but he'd rather not. That's certainly not what Joseph believed. "What you (his brothers) intended for evil, God intended for good." God didn't allow it for good. He intended it for good. He intended for Joseph to be tossed into that well by his brothers. He intended for Joseph to be sold as a slave, thrown into prison, and locked up for years. Because he intended to use it to shape Joseph into the man who would save his family from starvation, ultimately preserving the nation of Israel, and our world's hope for a Saviour. That is what God intended all along. And that's how he intends to use the suffering in my life - to shape me into the person he wants me to be, who will more accurately reflect his image in the world.
But that leads back to trust, back to a heart of trust that is so profound I can rest quietly in the trouble. No, not without tears and anguish. Not without confusion, questions, and lament. But quietly. Without insisting on a magic wand to wave it all away. Without doing everything I can and a whole bunch of things I can't to try to escape from the pain. It leads me to a heart that holds on to God, through the struggle, through the pain, until he blesses me. It leads me to the place where I am willing to suffer because I believe that He is of greater good than temporal comfort and ease.
I don't know that I'm there yet. But I'm thinking about being there. And I think that's a start.
