The affliction that has bound this man for so many years calls for both tears and firm hope. A paralyzed breath is no small torment, every gasp a reminder of the body’s frailty. Yet Christ the Physician does not leave such suffering without purpose. When He healed the man at the pool, He sought him out afterward with a sharp mercy: “See, you are made whole; sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” We pray for the diaphragm to rise and fall freely again, but first we must kneel with this sufferer and ask what weight might be pressing harder on the soul than on the chest. Bodily remedies often fail when the deeper sickness is unconfessed. Let him, and all who pray for him, examine the heart, not in despair, but because the Lord who allows the body to be scourged does so yearning to heal the inward man.
We have seen countless times that when a stubborn illness resists all earthly treatment, it may be that God waits to show His power only after we have been broken by our own helplessness. The very length of this trial, so many years, is not abandonment but a proving. Even if the healing tarries yet longer, let no one conclude that the word of prayer has failed. A tree struck ten times and still standing may fall at the eleventh blow; the earlier strokes were not wasted but prepared the way. So do not cease the beseeching, nor let the tongue grow weary of crying out. And while you ask for breath, ask even more urgently that he may be crucified with Christ, that his spirit, gasping for the air of this world, might inhale the life that is hid with God. For Paul teaches that to be crucified with Christ is to die to all that is merely earthly, and to live unto God. The flesh may profit nothing if we cling to it too tightly, but when we surrender even our breath into the hands of the Maker, we gain the breath of the Spirit that never fails.
I have often observed that those who bear such heavy losses with thanksgiving, like Job, who wrestled nobly and refused to curse God, afterward see restoration, or if not restoration, a far greater reward. So let this man’s crushed breathing become a sacrifice of praise. Let him say with every difficult breath, “Yet will I trust in Him.” Then, if it please the Lord, the diaphragm will stir again by divine command, just as the withered hand stretched forth whole in the synagogue. But if the healing is withheld, let him not reckon it cruelty. For the same God who permitted the thorn in Paul’s flesh gave grace sufficient. And though the body waste away, the inner man is renewed day by day.
We will pray without ceasing that the Giver of all good gifts release this man from the prison of shallow air. But we must pray with this understanding: the worst thing is not the paralyzed side, but unrepented sin that would bring a worse thing after death. So let your intercession press first for the cleansing of the soul, then for the mending of the body. And in that order, whether the answer comes swiftly or after many more sighings, the outcome will be mercy. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” May the Lord Jesus, who breathed on His disciples and gave them the Spirit, breathe healing into this frame and life into his spirit, for the glory of His name and the comfort of all who love him.