«Rejoice that your names are written in heaven».
Luke 10:20b
Why does God sometimes answer and sometimes not? Why are some miraculous and others left to die? Why does what is impossible happen and what is normal does not? These are some of the enigmas of existence, which can even torment the youngest in the faith. The answer to each of them is unquestionably the truest I have, and for this reason it is as acceptable as it is unacceptable: “I don't know”. We have the task and the faith to cry out against all adversities. To God, absolute sovereign, the unquestionable, albeit unacceptable freedom on earth, to do what he wants. Here is one of my favorite prayers: "Lord, your will be done ... and may it be close to mine this time."
We prefer to deal more with a disease of the body rather than with the salvation of the soul. And this is why we are more affected by a healed sick person than by a redeemed sinner. Yet Jesus directed our gaze precisely on the soul and on that which lasts forever, when to the seventy rejoicing for the miracles and deliverances they had witnessed, he recommended: "rejoice that your names are written in heaven" (Luke 10:20). Furthermore, he urged them, and consequently all of us, not to worry about who could harm the body. Rather we should have been careful about who could harm our souls (Matthew 10:28). Instead, we tend to emphasize what concerns our body, because the truth is that nobody wants to suffer. The more medicine progresses, the more we do not want to contemplate eternity, but we prefer to extend our days on earth. We would like to go back to at least one hundred and twenty years before the flood (Genesis 6:3), but we wouldn't mind living as long as the first post-Noaitic patriarchs. The most skeptical ask why God allows us to get sick and then heal ourselves? We should perhaps ask like the disciples, in the case of the man born blind, in search of a guilty one: "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2). Then we deal with the many miracles that Scripture presents to us, and the text that Jesus healed many of those who were brought to him and all those who touched the hem of his garment were healed (Mark 6:56). Everybody?!
In the Pentecostal world in particular, the theme of health and healing has unfortunately been linked beyond the due to the theme of sin and estrangement from God. In this way, health and salvation have become interdependent terms, disease is seen as a degeneration caused by sin and consequently any attempt to heal, beyond prayer and faith in healing, is considered legitimate. Medical science is a gift from God and intelligence capable of developing cures and therapies as an original faculty of man as a creature of God. In other cases, however, the absolute abandonment to the possibilities of God capable of guaranteeing miraculous healings has led towards rather questionable and in some cases deleterious forms of extremism due to the aversion to any medical treatment in the treatment of diseases or to the misplaced insistence of the search for miraculous healing at all costs proposed by unlikely preachers.
I fear that many will not like this writing, particularly those who have already had to put a plaque on the unfulfilled prayer for a relative, those who have seen the sign "There is nothing more to be done" raised, those who have had to do come to terms with those bitter and tasteless, cold and distant "I'm sorry" of some person in a white coat or uniform. If you are among these, believe me, you, you have all my understanding, not the formal and distant one but the pragmatic and supportive one of those who knew those moments, of those who looked death in the face, of those who fought and then raised white flag, of those who had a dream and found themselves living a nightmare. Yes, I have known the dust, the defeat, but never the defeat, because I am sure that his unquestionable action is always for our good. Many times, he lifted me up and raised me on the dust, when I was ready to say the last word. And I decided to tell it because there are just as many who need to nourish hope, to believe that God is not indifferent and distant. As long as there is a breath of life we must fight. As long as we have air in our lungs we must invoke and wait for the impossible, without ever expecting it.
(from the introduction of my book "I believe in miracles", BE Edizioni)
Weekly Bible Reading
Plan # 27
June 27, Job 8-10; Acts 8:26-40
June 28, Job 11-13; Acts 9:1-21
June 29, Job 14-16; Acts 9:22-43
June 30, Job 17-19; Acts 10:1-23
July 01, Job 20-21; Acts 10:24-48
July 02, Job 22-24; Acts 11
July 03, Job 25-27; Acts 12