Miracles That Don’t Work

On tv last Sunday night, I saw a film clip of a little kid trying to drink from a water fountain, the kind they call a bubbler. He almost had the knack of it, but he couldn’t get a drink.

He’d press the button on the side and water arched forth. But when he leaned forward to drink, the flow stopped because he couldn’t keep the button down.

He puzzled and puzzled over the contraption, a comic expression on his face.

Finally some adult lifted him up while pressing the button and the kid drank.

This came up Monday as my friend Barbara White, author of the Along The Way series of books, treated me to breakfast at Dave’s Diner. As usual we gossiped about friends and family, books and videos, politics and newspapers, the whole state of Christ’s church and the world.

But mostly we talked about divine healing.

Barbara’s grown daughter undergoes chemotherapy treatments often. Barbara drove her to several radiation treatments last week.

Among the Scriptures we talked about was that odd instruction in James’ letter that says, “Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him”.

Barbara observed that we often try to reduce the miraculous to a formula.

If I do such and such, then God has to do thus and so. He’s obligated.

Nonsense.

What has any of us ever done to put Almighty God in our debt?

Barbara said this play called life is about Him, not about us. We are stage hands or bit players in His story.

“It’s all about Jesus,” she said.

Now the apparent formula for healing in James’ letter seems to be first, call the elders, I suppose that means the wisest and smartest people among us, Naturally that means doctors. If you don’t believe me, just ask one of them.

They are to pray and anoint the sick person with oil. I suppose that means give him the best treatment available — Like when Jesus commended the Good Samaritan who poured oil on the wounds of the guy who’d been mugged on the highway.

A friend of mine who works at the Mayo Clinic says that the duty of a doctor is to amuse the patient till he either gets well or dies.

I’m not that cynical.

Not quite.

Although years ago a physician did prescribe Vioxx for my arthritis pain. But when I read the label warnings on the bottle, I decided I’d rather endure the pain than risk poisoning myself and trashed the stuff. This was long before the maker recalled the drug when they admitted it was killing patients.

But I’m not cynical about medical science. I suspect the Vioxx scandal is more related to Merck’s accounting department than to its physicians.

Sometimes the stuff they do for sick people at Mayo works; but not always. I mean they push all the right buttons but the patient dies anyhow.

Maybe it takes a miracle.

I think I almost saw a miraculous healing once.

Maybe.

I’m not sure. I have my doubts.

What happened was, about 50 years ago a young pregnant woman tumbled down a long flight of stairs from her third floor apartment. At the emergency room she was told she’d lose the baby. For some reason, she and her husband called me. I went over, anointed her forehead with olive oil and prayed. A few weeks later she gave birth to a healthy son.

Did my voodoo charm of oil and prayer make any difference at all?

Was the happy outcome the result of what the doctors did for her in the emergency room and hospital?

Might she have sustained the fall, foregone any treatment at all, and had the healthy baby anyhow?

I have no idea.

After all babies are tough little fellows. They cling to life tenaciously.

So maybe the birth of that child was a normal thing. Maybe that kid was just hardheaded.

But anointing the woman and praying seemed the thing to do at the time.

So I did it.

But this is not a magic formula.

If I grease the sick one’s forehead and pray, then God has to…

No He doesn’t!

Indeed He has set physical and spiritual rules in place in the universe. Normally such rules work. But often they don’t.

I press the button. I see the water splash. I lean forward…

Damn!

It stopped.

What went wrong?

Nothing.

It’s just that I’m too little to reach — some Adult has to lift me up.

That’s the only way things work.