A Mustard Seed Healing

Ten years ago I spent hours going up and down a ladder to paint a two story wall—in Toms no less! Needless to say, my feet were in quite a bit of pain by the end of it. Doing my best to demonstrate my pain to my wife, I came home and hobbled my way upstairs and collapsed on my bed. There I said a laughably stupid prayer in my head: “God, could you maybe ask Jodi to come rub my feet?” This was followed by a sarcastic suggestion: “Or, you know, you could heal it.”

Immediately the pain subsided.

Confused, I hopped up from my bed to test it. Any remaining pain I felt was very dull—nothing remotely close to what I felt before. I ran downstairs to show my wife that I was a different person than when I walked upstairs 5 minutes ago. I had been healed!

The fact that God could heal was not news to me. I had seen such miracles happen in a moment many times before. Indeed, the possibility of healing (among other things) was exactly why we made the habit of always having a prayer team available during worship at our church. But I had never been on the other side of healing before—I was never the one getting healed!

But why did God heal me in that moment? It’s not like it had to happen. The pain would have gone away in a day or two. And what kind of a faith-filled prayer did I pray?: “Or, you know, you could heal it.” If that’s not a mustard-seed-sized faith, I don’t know what is. Yes, I knew he could heal it, but I certainly didn’t expect in that moment that he would heal it.

But that’s just the thing: Jesus can always be an answer to any pain we feel, be it physical, spiritual, emotional, or mental. Such prayers are not always answered immediately or miraculously and often times the reasons why are unknown, but Jesus is always the possibility of a miracle nonetheless. And so we pray.

That moment in my life always reminds me of the time Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. Fevers come and go, but Jesus took the time to stop it early. He then went on to work with the crowds that came to him, healing any and every kind sickness that came his way. For no one has greater compassion than God.