May 2019 - LPNI

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May 2019

LPNI Devotion - May 2019

Healings

At Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. John 4:46-47.

There is healing and then there is healing. I well remember a dear lady named Grace who was a member of my congregation. She was in her 80s, and she had a daughter who was afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Grace taught me a beautiful lesson about our Lord’s healing. I often heard Grace telling someone, “I’ve been praying for years for God to come and heal my daughter, and I have come to realize that God already has healed her, because his true healing is eternal”. Whether Grace’s daughter was healed of MS or not, Grace was able to rejoice with her, because her joy was in knowing the Lord had prepared a place for her in heaven.

What I came to realize, thanks to Grace, is that there is temporal healing and there is eternal healing. Sometimes we anguish over a loved one who is gravely ill, and we are often brought to the point of being angry with God because our loved one is still bedridden. Our Heavenly Father wants us to place that disease in the perspective of eternity. The Bible in 2 Corinthians 17-18 even boldly brings to our attention, For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

We all know someone, perhaps a dear family member, who suffers from a serious illness. God reminds us to keep that illness in perspective. A few years ago there was a young couple in my congregation who had a sweet little three-year-old boy, whom the doctors diagnosed with an incurable disease. At the time of his baptism he was less than a month old, and his parents had dreams of his future farming with his father. Now those dreams were dashed. The parents and family were heartbroken. Their precious child was not going to live to be an adult. He eventually passed away at the age of seven. But even after all those years of tearful praying and pleading for healing, they were still able to say, “Pastor, at his funeral would you please let everyone know that today our little boy is perfectly healed!”

So yes, we witness many types and degrees of healing in our lives, but let us give thanks to God that through faith in his son, he gives us a healing that is eternal.

Rev. Mike Winkelman

Pastor, St. Peter Lutheran Church

Morrison, IL, USA