Pray for the sick

I needed the reminder.

Yesterday my mother came home from work looking stressed out. She'd been to one of her patients who was—and probably still is—struggling for dear life. The man came to her days ago to have his tooth extracted. Nanay noticed that his throat was swollen and about half his face paralyzed. The infection caused by the tooth abscess may have caused these. Without tubes attached to his nose, he couldn't breathe. The paralysis was spreading rapidly throughout his body. The antibiotics were his last hope.

It wouldn't have gone that far had the man come for treatment earlier. But he was poor. Obtaining a few pesos to pay for the long jeepney ride was hard for him, let alone getting the payment for cheap medicine. “How old is he?” I asked Nanay. The answer shocked me: 28 years old. He hasn't even reached 30, and he was facing the prospect of an early death.

Nanay gathered us at the dining table to pray for him. That's the most significant thing we could do. If the Lord so wills it, the may the he be healed. May the doctors attending to him be given wisdom, may the medicine take effect immediately. Above all may the Lord save his soul.

I've been asking for a lot of things from the Lord lately, not least of which is that I'd get the subjects I enlisted for next sem. Surely I should pray for more important things, things that matter eternally—like the healing of the sick, the salvation of the peoples of the world who do not know Christ personally, the empowerment of Biblical churches....

I needed the reminder. And so do all of us.