Not long ago I sat in a hospital room praying for an older man dying of cancer. I asked God to heal him, but later I wondered if I did the right thing. When someone comes to the end of a long and godly life, what should we pray for? Healing? Comfort? God’s will? It’s hard to know.

Of Jesus’ recorded healings, almost all involve people with a life-altering disability like blindness (John 9), deafness (Mark 7:31-37), demon possession (Mark 5:1-20), or deformity (Luke 13:10-17). Only once do we read of Jesus healing an ordinary disease—when he healed Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever (Mark 1:29-31). Only once do we read of Jesus healing an ordinary injury: replacing the ear of the high priest’s servant in the garden (Luke 22:51). When Jesus raised people from the dead, only once does the Bible indicate the person’s age, and that girl was only 12 years old (Mark 5:21-43). We read of Jesus keeping disease from cutting someone’s life short (Luke 7:1-10), and we read of him enhancing people’s lives by releasing them from crippling disabilities, but we never see him using his healing powers to extend an already long life.

Healing and Old Age

What do we make of all this? A cynic might say Jesus never healed someone dying of old age because he couldn’t. Jesus’ healings, such a person might claim, were not real healings but examples of the power of suggestion, and suggestion won’t stop old age. This answer doesn’t fit the Gospel data, for we see Jesus healing all kinds of diseases that the power of suggestion could not touch—leprosy, deformity, and so on. Or maybe the miracles we read about are the more dramatic ones and Jesus really did heal people at the end of a long life. No doubt Jesus performed more healings than we read about in the Gospels (John 20:30, 31), but we have only the Gospels to go on when we explore these questions, and we have to assume that if we read nothing about his keeping people from dying of old age, he didn’t do so.

More likely, Jesus healed people in their prime to restore them to the kind of wholeness God desires. As far as we can tell, he did not interfere with the natural process that ends a long life.

If this reading of the Gospel data is correct, where does it leave us? It seems to me we should respect the natural process that ends our lives after so many years, even though we realize death is not God’s ultimate plan for us. When we pray for people at the apparent end of life, we do not have to ask God to keep them hanging on. Instead, we may recognize that the end is near and pray God’s comfort for the family.

People often accept this reality. Families will say things like, “We wanted to keep her with us a little longer, but that was selfish. We had to let her go.” Apparently Jesus knew this too, and if the Gospel miracles are a representative sample of the healings he did, he too was willing to let people go. |L

Carl B. Bridges is on the faculty at Johnson Bible College in Knoxville, Tennessee.

OTHER COLUMNS:
November 15, 2009 - Bringing Christ to French Guiana
November 1, 2009 - Walking the edge
October 18, 2009 - Watch what you say
October 4, 2009 - Proposing a new proverb
September 20, 2009 - Fear and trembling
September 6, 2009 - Elwyn
August 23, 2009 - Where did the Bible go?
August 9, 2009 - The public school: a local mission field
July 26, 2009 - Astonishing the judges
July 12, 2009 - Letting the past go
June 28, 2009 - Line up
June 14, 2009 - The path to spiritual growth
May 31, 2009 - A tribute to one of my heroes
May 17, 2009 - Silent soldier
April 19, 2009 - Operation Resensitization
April 5, 2009 - The temptations of ministers
March 8, 2009 - Conversation over shoes
February 22, 2009 - By their plurals you shall know them
February 8, 2009 - What is missing from your retirement plans?
January 25, 2009 - Turn the page
December 28, 2008 - Abba, Father
December 14, 2008 - Elementary truths
November 30, 2008 - The illusion
October 19, 2008 - Acting like a toddler
October 5, 2008 - Don’t miss this
September 21, 2008 - Foolish schemes
September 7, 2008 - God’s hand is everywhere
August 24, 2008 - The dance
August 10, 2008 - Strange land
July 27, 2008 - God’s amazing grace
July 13, 2008 - A best seller
June 29, 2008 - My grandfather’s clock and worship
June 1, 2008 - Reclaiming the name
May 4, 2008 - God is not our fairy godmother
April 6, 2008 - Success: what is it and who can measure up?
March 9, 2008 - Need to know
February 10, 2008 - The top three myths of singleness
January 13, 2008 - By invitation only
December 5, 2007 - Yes, Abbie, there is a Jesus
November 18, 2007 - 10 Ways to be a good Christmas customer
October 21, 2007 - The dividing line
September 23, 2007 - What do you fear?
September 9, 2007 - A life well lived
August 26, 2007 - To murmur, or not to murmur
July 29, 2007 - The cross and the Christian
July 15, 2007 - Turning the other cheek: still a valuable biblical principle
July 1, 2007 - Why the tie?
June 3, 2007 - The death of a son
April 8, 2007 - The omnipresent God
March 11, 2007 - Do the Amish have superheroes?
February 11, 2007 - What’s your black history?
January 14, 2007 - The split branch
December 31, 2006 - The house of regret
December 10, 2006 - The redemption of the innkeeper
November 26, 2006 - Too many choices
November 12, 2006 - Break the bashing habit: Learning to love the unsaved like Christ does: November 12, 2006
October 15, 2006 - Be ‘salt and light’ this Christmas!: October 15, 2006
September 17, 2006 - Who is a legalist?: September 17, 2006 Issue 38
July 23, 2006 - God speaks through our brokenness: July 23, 2006 Issue 38
June 25, 2006 - 'What I am looking for in my church leaders'