During my trip to Israel I became ill. It wasn’t until very recently that I regained my health. In times of sickness, perhaps more than any other times, I find that I am usually more likely to remain independent and self-sufficient. While I do not for a minute believe that God “made me sick” I do believe with all my heart that His intention was to use this time to teach me a lesson or two.
It’s easy for me to reach out to God when I’m sick. I ask for healing. Sometimes He heals me and sometimes I have to let the illness run its course. It’s not difficult to call out to Him because it’s something I do in private. No one sees how needy I am. No one else sees me cry or complain. I know that even if I cry and complain incessantly – He won’t think of me as a cry-baby. He won’t think that I’m a pain in His Holy Side.
One afternoon, a couple of weeks ago, I had some dental work done – a root canal – by the following day a horrendous infection had set in. I had never (even during childbirth) felt this kind of pain before. I cried out to God but the healing wasn’t provided – at least not for what physically ailed me.
My son asked me, “Is there anything I can do for you?” I kept saying no. Really, what could he do – he wasn’t a dentist and he didn’t have any magic potion to take away the pain. God wanted to teach me that there are times to cry out in the supernatural and times to cry out in the natural. Because I rarely cry out into the natural, I prolonged my suffering. After about 24 hours, believe me when I say, I was crying out into the natural. Eventually, I did realize there was something my son could do – he was able to comfort me. In his words, “You always take care of me when I’m not feeling well. I can do the same for you.” He just wanted to be there for me. But it didn’t stop there. There was another lesson God wanted to teach me.
Hours later, the pain was excruciating. I was rolling around on the floor in tears – feeling completely out of control. I called a friend while sobbing like a baby and said, “Please come and take care of me.” What she was able to do was really not much more than what my son had been able to do, but I don’t think that was the point.
God has placed us in community for a reason. He knows that there are times we need a human touch. There are times we need to be comforted, to be tucked in, to be hugged, to have someone make us a bowl of soup, or pray for us. He has placed us in a family of community for this purpose – to express His love for us through others and to express His love for others through us. It works both ways. We cannot be givers and never receivers to do so is to rob others of their blessings. There is Comfort in Community because where there is love there is God.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God,” 1 Cor. 1:3-4.
