It can sound like a pat response or one of desperation and helplessness. It can be the most meaningful words of comfort or sound like a canned litany of the faithful. “I’ll pray for you,” someone says and as grateful as you are, you wonder if it will make any difference.
It does. It will. It matters more than you know.
Not long ago I landed in the hospital with a mysterious infection that sent my temperature soaring and my lungs gasping for breath. I wasn’t well enough for any visitors. I could hardly talk. The doctors were baffled.
My wife sent out daily email bulletins to a long list of family and friends. And almost all of them asked, “Please pray for Rick.”
I wasn’t on the computer, nor texting from my phone, but the messages came to her, to me, to my phone, to Facebook when I finally posted an update there. People were praying. Hundreds of them, maybe thousands.
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What does it feel like to prayed for like that? At first it can be a little overwhelming. “How do I respond to all these people?” I wondered. “How do I thank them? How do I keep up?”
I couldn’t. What I had to accept–and this is a God thing–that I was loved. I had to receive the love. I had to be open to it. Even if I could barely get up from my bed, I couldn’t avoid knowing that I was loved.
Did I pray in the hospital for myself? Not much. I couldn’t really concentrate on prayer. I didn’t feel well enough, didn’t have the energy. All the more reason to be prayed for.
I’d once written about this, that we pray for people at those difficult times when they can barely pray for themselves. Now I was that person needing prayer.
Love has its healing powers, no doubt about that. I could feel God’s healing love at work in the doctors, the nurses, the techs, the aids, the residents, the interns, all the hospital staff that was treating me. And I knew it through the loved ones reaching out to me.
After two weeks I was finally released from the hospital and after more weeks of recovering at home, I was well enough to return to work, to return to running in the mornings, to return to writing, to return to singing at church, to return to praying for others who need prayers as much as I did.
Today I have no symptoms of what ailed me. In the end, the doctors could never determine exactly what felled me. The way I like to think of it is, “The doctors kept me alive. The prayers healed me.”
Is it any surprise that I am only too glad to pray for others, people with crippling needs, whether it’s their health or relationships or financial concerns? “I’ll pray for you,” I say and I do. It is a way to spread God’s healing love as far as any of our prayers can take it. Far, far, far.
