Persistent Prayer and a Request

Last night Nelson and I were on our way across town to a benefit for local children. We had plenty of time in the car to talk so the topics bounced from house building to prayer.

I told him that a good friend of ours who we have been praying for over the past few years as she battles cancer was put on hospice yesterday. He wondered how she felt about that since she knew so many people have been praying for her healing for so long.

We had a long discussion about prayer. Why do we pray? What difference does it make if God knows the outcome already? Why does God heal some and not others? We wondered why children get sick and suffer. They are innocent souls. They don't have any sins to work through.

Needless to say, it got pretty deep. The bottom line, we concluded, is that faith is necessary. God always hears our prayers and always answers them. Unfortunately, and fortunately most of the time, His will is not always our will.

Yesterday's Gospel reading was about the paralytic who was lowered through the roof by his friends to be healed. Most homilies about this Gospel center around the paralytic and Jesus’ interchange with the people present at his healing. What stood out to me about it, especially after the previous conversation, was not the paralytic or even Jesus – it was the friends.

Think about it. These friends carried this paralytic who knows how far or how long just to get the chance to be near Jesus. When they arrived at the house, there were so many people waiting that they couldn’t get near the door. They didn’t let that stop them though. Next they pushed their way through the people and then hoisted the guy onto the roof. That couldn’t have been easy after the trip. Then, with what little strength they had left, they cut a whole through the roof, lowered their friend down and laid him at the feet of Jesus. After that we don’t hear about them again.

After all that. After the long journey. After the aching back and arms. After all they endured. Jesus didn’t give them what they really wanted. He didn’t heal their friend right away. He forgave him. We all know that’s really the best gift Jesus could have given him but something tells me that’s not the reason those friends were so persistent. In the end, after a brief confrontation, Jesus did heal the man who stood up and walked out of the house himself. Can you imagine the celebration he must have had with his friends that day?

The point for me was the power of persistent prayer. It would have been so easy for those friends to turn around and go home when they saw the crowd. It would have been easy to just stay at home and send word to Jesus and hope he had time to pay the guy a visit. But they didn’t do that. They kept at it. They were in it for the long haul.

We all have the opportunity to be a friend like that for someone we know. We can fast and pray and lay hands on and offer our sufferings and frustrations for people who have it worse than we do. We have to be willing to do WHATEVER it takes to lay them at the feet of Jesus. And then…we have to leave them there and let Jesus decide what’s best for them.

It was a long ride across town but a good one. We had fun at the benefit and then made the trip back. When I walked in the door I received word that my Uncle Dick went in for a routine physical and they discovered he has colon cancer and will have surgery on the 24th of this month. Isn’t it amazing how God prepares us for certain situations?

I hope, if you get the chance, you will join me in bringing my uncle to the feet of Jesus. Pray for his peace. Pray for his family. Pray for his healing. Uncle Dick, I hope you know that I will! I love you.