During the ride to the village on the dirt roads among rice fields and water buffalo I find myself thinking that today has got to be the day, it’s got to happen now, it’s the last time I will see him. As walk up to the house I don’t see the chief sitting in his usual spot, then I see him and my heart sinks, he is now bedridden.
From the day I met this man I wanted a miracle for him. “Is this from God?” I thought. Healings from the divine have never been a very comfortable thought for me. It scared me a little. I did not know what to do with the thought.
But it persisted and came up several times after this initial meeting. A miracle. Put aside logic and what I know of the confines of the natural world I live in to allow God to do the “impossible,” a daily devotional told me. Whats more is that this devotional was sent to me by my mother who had no idea want was going on in Cambodia or in my mind.
I began to press into this as it had become more than just a thought. I truly believe that this was from the Lord and he wanted to do something. I began to pray for a miracle for the chief.
But each time I went to see him, the baseball sized cyst on the back of his hand was still there. Each time I laid my hands on it and prayed to the Lord for healing the cyst remained. I was getting discouraged.
So here I am now on my knees with the chief’s hand sandwiched in between mine. The rest of my team, hands laid on him. Six voices being raised in unison to heaven on behalf of this sweet man.
“Lord give us the faith. Bring healing that your glory may be revealed here in this life and in this village. May it be a witness to your power and might.”
Surely God will hear our cries and bring the miraculous to this moment. The prayer ends. The cyst remains. The sickness persists. The ride away from the village is longest yet.
I left Cambodia with many jumbled emotions, thoughts, and feelings. The chief of Kok Russey village is the heaviest of these on my heart. I don’t understand why things happened the way they did. I don’t understand why healing never came after all that God put in my heart and in front of me. It doesn’t make much sense in my human mind. Why couldn’t God just heal him? Seems easy enough for the God who created the universe to remove a little sickness and cyst from a man. Did I miss something? Was that God putting that on my heart? Was there a lack of faith?
I know that I am not the first to struggle with these questions nor will I be the last. I have no answers here. All I have is this:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts then your thoughts. Isaiah 55:8-9
