A Prayer for the Sick

Watercolor painting of a farmhouse kitchen at dawn with a brass lamp lit beside an open Bible on the table
Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.
— Jeremiah 17:14

When someone we love is sick, there is a particular helplessness in it. The body does what it does, on its own clock, and we are not in charge of it. The waiting is long, and the worry comes worst in the small hours, when the house is quiet and there is nothing to do but think. The oldest thing, and the truest, is to carry them to the Lord — to set the whole weight of it down in front of him, and to ask.

Lord,
the one I love is not well, and I have come to you because I do not know what else to do.
You knew them before they drew their first breath, and you know the trouble in the body now, and the fear that comes with it.
Lay your hand where ours cannot reach. Ease what can be eased. Quiet the fear.
If it is your will to heal, then heal — and if the road is longer than we hoped, then walk it with them, and with all of us who love them, and do not let them feel alone in it.
Give wisdom to the doctors and the nurses, and steadiness to their hands. Give rest to the weary, and patience to those who keep watch.
I cannot carry this. So I am handing it to you, the way a child hands a heavy thing to her father, and trusting that you have it.
Amen.

I have learned, over the years, not to tell the Lord how to answer. Sometimes the healing comes plain as morning. Sometimes it comes slowly, and looks for all the world like ordinary medicine and ordinary time. And sometimes the healing we asked for is not the healing we are given — and that is the hardest prayer of all to keep praying. But I have come to believe that he is near in every one of those, that he does not leave, and that no one we have carried to him is ever, for one moment, out of his hands. That has been enough to pray on. Most mornings, it has had to be.

Ruby writes a short devotional every morning in this same spirit — Scripture, and a few plain words for the day. If it would help to begin the day with a quiet word, you can subscribe — it's free — or stay a while and read more of her writing.