A beneficiary of prayer

I am working on coming out of the closet as a beneficiary of prayer.

It is not easy.

I do not like admitting publicly that I have been temporarily disabled.  But I have been, and it’s been pretty hard to hide.  Seven weeks ago now the pain in my back and leg became so excruciating that I could not stand.  I was puzzled, unbelievably distracted, concentrated in the distress.

Herniated disks.

You know.  So many of you know.  I just didn’t personally know that kind of pain and physical disability.

There are many learnings and experiences from this time, and it is hard to separate them, but the one I wish to explore is prayer.

The pain, and the drugs, disrupted my consciousness.  What I had understood to be prayer – a time of personal and biblical reflection, and quiet contemplation, was not possible.  When the pain was there, my prayer was the agony of the spirit and desire for relief and healing.  When the drugs were present, I was simply in the helplessness of God.

But here is the beginning of what I am trying to uncover enough to talk about: I was resting in the arms of my Savior.  I was safe in the care of my wife and friends and of competent professional people and helpers.  That experience of safety underlay the experience of pain, and fear, and uncertainty.

There was a hard mattress on the floor.  But there was a soft mattress surrounding my spirit.

People told me they were praying for me.  They were.

The spirit surrounds, and the spirit responds.

The mind is disabled by the medication and by the obsession and by the pain, but it is dragged along, like a once-pampered stuffed animal, on a journey it does not comprehend or control or even know enough to desire.

That mind had based itself on certain very important premises: That God has no favorites, but loves everyone as if they were his favorite.  That God intends the spiritual healing of every single person (this is salvation), but that physical healing is more mysterious in his creation.  That our prayer is not necessary for God’s action, and does not persuade him to be good to us (he already is).  But that prayer is necessary, unavoidable, and wonderful, and in some way goes alongside of God’s healing work.

This particularity of prayer.  This sense of having been held, and coddled, and cared for, continuing….  This belief that all is well, and all will be well.  This sense that this truly is God’s creation, that he is real and daily and definite and purposeful.

Not new thoughts.  But different in sense, in weight, in meaning.

(And just for the record, the drugs have been gone for more than a week.)

The power of God to relieve and new-build is in some way tied up with the reality of prayer.

We don’t have a clue what is really going on here, either in our hearts or in our healing.  The ancient but ever young Truth, who is not ashamed to be viewed as a person, leads us forward in the power of his own humanity, and his Mother, the simple and profound young woman chosen to be the mother of God, does the same.

There are things happening in my own spirit, in my household, in the Community of Richmond Hill, and in this metropolitan city that are far beyond our knowledge.  Peace.  Love.  Healing.  Resurrection.  Revolution.

These movements are in prayer, they are related to prayer, they come out of prayer, they carry prayer with them.  The powers that be seem unconquerable — the inevitability of suffering, the certainty of everyone’s death, the seeming inevitability of injustice, and the inconsistency of recovery — are daunting.  They nag at us as we approach the Throne.  They tell us that it cannot happen, that in these things God is without power, or that his justice requires a consistency of predictable negative outcomes.

But those choruses disappear, somehow, and like the parting of the clouds and the appearance of a bright blue sky over the garden, a different song emerges:

Behold, I will make all things well.

I have no claim on this song or this outcome.  No understanding that could be called such.  There is no way that I can discuss it, or explain it, or tell it.

But I believe in the resurrection of the dead.  I know that my redeemer lives.  I believe that there is a different order of things underneath what we see that is surprising, hopeful, and true.  In this crazy quilt of inequity and despair and futility and disease and suffering, it is unbelievably present and surprisingly revolutionary.  It is not death that is remarkable.  What is incredible is life.

My back still hurts some, but I am walking.  Chastened.  Puzzled.  Humbled.  But encouraged.  These limitations are stunning.  But all that does is show what else is happening.

I’ll tell you the truth: I cannot describe what I know, and I am not even competent to talk about it.  It seems unbelievable, tentative, yet repeatedly secure.  And I am thinking this is in some way what it may mean to be in this blessing, — to be a beneficiary of prayer.

B. P. Campbell
Pastoral Director