As I was sitting in church on Sunday,
through a three and a half hour service that was all in Romanian, I
had some time to sit with the Lord and walk through some things. We
had a 15 year old boy named Pavel come to Casa Shalom with his mother
Thursday of last week. He had 
bone cancer in his leg when he was very
little, had surgery and got it removed, then had the cancer return
last year, had another surgery where they grafted bone from his hip,
and put it in his leg where the cancer had returned. Now a year later
the cancer may be back, and the area where he last had surgery has
major infection. He is in pain all the time, and cannot walk on his
leg much at all. So we prayed for him for three nights in a row, then
again Sunday morning at church, and then he went to the hospital
Sunday night. We are still waiting to hear how things went, he was
supposed to have the infection drained from his leg.
The thing about Pavel is that he has
more faith than most people I have ever seen. He was prayed over
before, and he believes that Jesus is going to completely heal him,
take all the cancer out of his body, remove all infection and pain.
He believes that so much that he doesn’t want to take medicine. He
believes that so much that instead of resting last year after the
surgery, he walked to school, because he loves to learn, and wants to
do big things with his life. He prays with such passion that tears
fall from his eyes as he literally cries out to the Lord. And as he
is crying out to the Lord he isn’t just saying Lord take away this
pain, he is thanking the Lord for forgiving his sins, for loving him,
asking the Lord to watch over his family, telling the Lord that he
knows God is able to heal him. It really makes me think about the
passion that I have, or sometimes don’t have, when I am praying…
church, and Pavel was up front, and the pastor and congregation were
praying in unison for his healing, and claiming that healing, and
cheering as the pastor closed the prayer, I looked in Pavel’s eyes,
and while he tried to walk back without his crutch, and be strong, I
still saw pain. A lot of it. And it broke my heart. And 8 months of
that same pain in peoples eyes around the world hit me. And I saw 8
months of suffering, and hunger, and poverty, and persecution, and
then it was my turn to have my eyes fill with hot tears. I cried out
to my heavenly daddy and said WHY!? Pavel has faith, the people we
have spent time with for the past eight months have had faith, I
don’t understand sometimes why you don’t just heal them. I know You
are able to do it. I know You love them more than enough to do it. I
know You don’t want to see them suffer, and that it hurts You more
than it does me, so why?
epiphanies regarding these things. My heart still hurts. I still
don’t understand, but I do know this much…
