The alarm clock went off way too early this morning, 3:30 to be exact. Twenty minutes later, I was out the door heading to a hospital an hour and 20 minutes away. A church member, a very dear friend, would be having very serious open-heart surgery.
The family got there a few minutes before I did. Once I arrived, we had a good session of prayer before my friend was taken down to surgery. The family and I made our way to the waiting room for one of the hardest parts of an ordeal like this: sitting and waiting and feeling helpless.
Helpless, though, may not be quite the right word. No, none of us were able to go into the operating room and participate in the life-saving surgery. If we had, there is no doubt that all of us would have done nothing but make matters worse.
But there is something we were able to do, and we and our entire church did so. We prayed – we prayed very hard. We still believe in a God who can heal. We have seen him do so many times, even in some cases where the medical community had proclaimed the cause to be utterly hopeless and lost.
Late in the morning, I spoke to my wife by telephone. While I was attending to surgery, she was sitting in on another one in another hospital. As we spoke, she said, “Let me tell you about your daughter “