An Unexpected Healing Miracle

As it so happened at the gym yesterday, and coordinationally challenged as I am, I accidentally injured myself by slipping on a yoga machine and crashing my left knee onto a thinly padded metal bar – ouch. So much ouch, that I walked around with a slight limp today as to avoid the pain flares from what felt would turn into a formidable bruise. Especially the stairs at work had turned into my archenemy of the day.

Of course, I took the opportunity to mope about it at God, telling Him about the annoying pain that dared to plague me on this fine day. As usual, He only lovingly responded with “Let Me take care of it.”, a gentle smile in the warmth of His Voice. Sure thing then, I’m all Yours, Lord! However uncomfortable the pain may be, I know that I am safely held in His Hands, and the Master Of Creation will heal me at a time of His Own Perfect Choosing; may it come sooner, or later.

Nevertheless, being the dork that I am, I still abused the occasion as an opportunity to farm sympathy from my coworkers by telling them in great detail all about my dramatically inconvenient affliction. (I know, it’s a bad habit, I’m working on it.) But it’s not like I was exaggerating (a lot). I am a person who religiously takes the stairs over the elevator any time I can, no matter how exhausted I feel; the staircase to my office on the second floor being no exception. However, God had been bugging me all morning already to avoid overexerting my injured knee, so after lunch I begrudgingly complied and took the elevator back up. I won’t lie, it was such a relief to arrive on the second floor without knee pain that I let out an audible sigh before limping back into my office.

Around two hours later it was time for my daily afternoon coffee pilgrimage to the cafeteria in the other company building, so I asked my coworker if she’d like to accompany me for the opportunity to stretch her legs. As we left the office, I started telling her about my injury I sustained, and, for demonstrative purposes, tried to angle my leg in a way that would make the pain flare up.

Except… It didn’t.

Huh. Odd.

I started pressing around the knee cap where it had felt bruised earlier. No pain, not even a slight wince. I put my weight on the leg. Walked a step. Nothing. I was thoroughly perplexed. Where did the hurt go? Even as we were walking down the stairs, all I felt was some muscle soreness from training yesterday, but nothing pertaining to the knee injury. I was stumped. Huuuuhh?? It was only on the last flight of stairs that I finally arrived at the realization of what must have happened – God must have healed my knee, but why? I certainly hadn’t prayed for healing, and to my knowledge, nobody else had, either. As a confirmation, He spoke into my thoughts with an audible grin, “I just wanted to bless you.” … ?!?!??!?!?!?!!? Say whaaaaaaaat??!!!?!?!! I was just completely dumbfounded, nonplussed. I did not know how to handle a sudden blessing of such magnitude.

Why does God heal some people, and some others not?

Because in my limited view, healing miracles are a very exclusive blessing that mostly occurs at big healing prayer events, and certainly only for the ones who need it the most. I had to immediately remember the prophetic weekend seminar I had visited a few weeks ago, which included healing prayer sessions. I had witnessed there firsthand what a “big deal” (mind the quotation marks) such healing prayer events are. How many people flock there with the aspiration, in many cases even desperation, that they’ll be specially selected by God to receive divine healing. People afflicted with crippling diseases who have nothing but faith to cling to for a faint hope of recovery. I have even personally encountered paralyzed people who have told me about what great financial lengths they had gone to, traveling enormous distances, solely fueled by the promise of a chance for being miraculously cured. People who are truly desperate. And yet, so many times, who have to leave bearing the same ailment, in the same state, as when they arrived.

Meanwhile, I had met none of these criteria. I was sitting in my comfortable office, thoughts anywhere but on God, with no intention to ask or pray for healing, with a minor injury that wasn’t even passively noticeable and would go away on its own in a few days, tops. And yet, God decided that in this purely capitalist environment, this large office building with likely not a soul wasting a second thought on Him… He would perform a healing miracle. With no big event surrounding it, without anything fancy or showy about it, completely unnoticed, even.

For an injury barely worth mentioning.

Why would He do that? Doesn’t this seem utterly unfair in our perception of justness? To not say, superfluous? Arbitrary, even? I’m sure that if I dwelt on this train of thought long enough, I could fill an entire paragraph with all that seems ‘wrong’ with this. When viewed from our limited human perspective, we will never be able to make sense of God’s Choices.

But God doesn’t think the way that we do. What seems unjust and playing favorites to us, is to Him perfectly fair and in alignment with His Lovingkindness. We just don’t see the bigger picture that He does. He didn’t see a triviality that He arbitrarily considered more important than other, more severe, more relevant, worse cases.

What He saw was a beloved daughter in pain, who nevertheless decided to trust Him and yield to Him; regardless of whether He’d take her pain away or not. Who still wanted to draw close to Him, not for the benefits and blessings she might receive, but solely for Him Himself. A daughter who so fully and reverently adored Him in absolute, complete self-surrender. And I have now realized…

This wasn’t about the severity of the injury. This was about principle.

For how can we trust Him in the large things, when we don’t even in the small?

Trusting God to heal you isn’t a desperate hope for experiencing a miraculous recovery.

Trusting God to heal you is an indifference to however long it may take, because you know that God is Sovereign, and that is all that matters.

He didn’t heal me because I wanted or even needed it.

He healed me because He Loves me, and I love Him.

ברוך אתה ה' אלהינו מלך העולם
Blessed are You, O Lord our God, Sovereign of the Universe.