A Prayer for Healing for a Friend

Pray one for another, that ye may be healed.
— James 5:16

Watching a friend go through something hard — and not being able to fix a bit of it — is its own kind of ache. We'd carry it for them if we could. We'd trade places. But that's not usually how it works, and so we're left with what can feel like very little to offer — a casserole, a phone call, a seat in the waiting room. Only it isn't little. The oldest thing friends have ever done for one another, long before there were hospitals or hot dishes, is pray. And it still does more than we will ever see this side of glory.

Lord, I'm bringing you my friend.
You know the trouble they're in better than I do, and you love them even more than I do, hard as that is to imagine.
So I'm asking, plainly: heal them.
Mend what's broken, in the body and in the heart both.
Where I can show up and help, make me the kind of friend who shows up.
And where I can't — where all I can do is wait and worry — let me hand the worrying to you, and trust that you are already there, closer than I could ever get.
Amen.

It's a hard lesson, and most of us learn it more than once: we cannot save the people we love. We can love them, and feed them, and sit with them, and pray our hearts out for them — but the saving is not ours to do. That used to trouble me more than it does now. Because the verse doesn't say pray for one another and you'll do the healing. It says pray for one another, that ye may be healed — and leaves the healing in the hands it was always in. We do the loving. We do the praying. And we let him do the rest, which he is far better at than we are.

Pray it for whoever's on your heart today. And if a few quiet words each morning would help, Ruby writes a short devotional every day in the same spirit — Scripture, and something plain to hold onto. You can subscribe — it's free, or stay a while and read more of her writing.