Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

• John 5:3-7

They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”
He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”
Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into the village.”

• Mark 8:22-26

It is no secret, unless you have not read my posts lately, that my wife passed away about two weeks ago, early on a Sunday morning, not long after midnight.  She had a cardiac event of some sort when she arrived that Saturday morning at the kidney dialysis center.  After a gut wrenching twenty minutes of the center’s defibrillator giving instructions.  “Stand Clear.  …  No acceptable rhythm detected. Stand clear. … No acceptable rhythm detected.  Start CPR, Push. Push. Push. Push. Push.”  To have that type of technology is comforting.  To be the spouse of the patient and hearing that computer voice giving instructions is gut wrenching.

I told my wife later that day, when we did not know that what had happened simply gave us a few hours of time together, I wanted to write a post about what happens when all other distractions of life are not available or are overpowered by one particular need.  How then do you pray?  All I could think of at the time was “Oh, Lord, Please!”

My wife had talked about not wanting to be resuscitated earlier that week, but then she was glad that she had been.  But we both talked about the options, quite often.  Do you pray for healing so that you can glorify God here on earth?  Or do you pray for complete healing and go to be with Jesus forever?

My wife was torn in three directions, only two destinations, but my wife always thought of others.  She wanted to be healed, but by the end of the day on that Saturday, it was going to take an aortic valve replacement and a donated kidney for life to be life again.  Odds were going against her.  But in leaving this world, she thought of being with Jesus, but she also thought that once she was gone, I would not be distracted with being her caregiver and I could write more.

Besides the first two options, my fear on the third option was that she is too often my muse.  I felt that I still needed her.  That will be another test from God.  Can I now overcome the loss of my spouse and rely on God all the more?

As it turned out, she remembered something that I have written many times before.  “When the gates of Heaven open, and Jesus is standing there, beckoning me to come to Him, nothing will distract me.  I will run to Him, not knowing if the gates might close at any minute.”  She had two doctors and a few nurses trying to keep her alive long enough to temporarily fix the immediate problem, but as soon as her heart would beat 2, 3, or a half dozen times, it would stop again.  She was running into Jesus’ arms.

But if you are a member of the prayer warriors in the church, you often get an email or a call to pray for someone.  They might add, “Pray for complete healing.”  But the only complete healing is for the person to pass to the Lord.  That is not what the person is communicating.  Only once, as it is recorded, did Jesus do an incomplete job of healing a blind man.  But Jesus did not stop until the blind man could see properly.  It would be silly to pray that the person is cured of their broken hip, but they should have pain for the rest of their life.  No one would ask God for that.  But the only true complete healing is to be with Jesus.

When it gets to that point in your life when you realize how much pain your loved one is in, how do you pray?  You might be left with three words, and nothing else seems to fit beyond that…

Oh, Lord, Please!

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.