How not to pray for someone with cancer

Don’t pray for a future healing. Find today’s grace.

Don’t pray for instant total healing.

Well, do if you must, but it may be that you are really responding to your own rage and pain rather than listening to God. The Psalms do this a lot.

But consider the poor schmuck you are praying for: there might be a better way.

First, remember the context. Suffering is everywhere. Cancer is everywhere. Our seemingly–lonesome path has already been worn down by millions of heavy footsteps and many others are queuing behind us. This can help us past our self-obsession. And we can learn to look with fresh eyes on the human species. So much struggle. And what a brave lot we all are.

Second, reflect that even complete healing (whatever that is) is just part of wider and slower package that includes elements of rehabilitation, reflection and repentance. God continues tenderly to love and form us. Our cancer is not separate from our disciple’s walk or our life’s work of glorifying God. It’s just another thing.

Third, think about the Kingdom and the gospels: ‘People would … beg [Jesus] to let the sick at least touch the edge of his cloak. And all who touched it were made well.’ 1 Remember the ‘all’. We are members of the all.

Just praying ‘God somehow take all this away,’ is entirely understandable. But, given everything, it is an ill-considered and unhelpful place for your prayers or your church’s prayers to land. Don’t focus your hopes on an encounter in the misty future that will make everything all right again.

Touch the edge of the cloak today. Pray for grace for today, for healing today. Pray for God’s help today: the fear and anxiety to be replaced with peace. The pain soothed. The stresses on everyone eased. A good night, rather than a dark one. Pray prayers of thanksgiving for the goodness of God and for the worth and value of the person being prayed for.

We are on very solid ground praying for peace today, dumping our worries and fears today, praying for good communication with each other today and finding ways to thank God and esteem each other’s love today. Find today’s grace.

Touch the cloak again tomorrow. Some of the tomorrows may include further investigations or treatment. Pray about those. Some of those days may include miraculous tumour-shrinkage or joyous remission. Wonderful. Keep pressing on with the rehab, the reflection, the repentance.

Mistaking the peace for the promise

A final thought, sometimes missed: it’s possible to mistake God’s peace for God’s promise. Especially when you’re desperate. When you just want horrible news to unhappen, and you pray and find peace, you can think God has said something when he hasn’t. He may indeed have something to say on the matter but that isn’t it and then wasn’t the time. What does the peace mean, then? It means he’s here, like always.

  1. Mark 6:56

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