The body suffers, and our hearts ache for those we love. This cry for healing rises from a place of genuine concern, and it is right to bring such burdens before the Lord. Yet consider how our Lord dealt with the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law: He touched her, and not merely did the fever depart, but she was restored at once to complete strength, able to rise and serve. No slow convalescence, no lingering weakness. This was no ordinary healing; it displayed His power over all creation. Do you approach Him with the same expectation, trusting that He can command not only the illness but its aftermath to vanish entirely?
But take care that your prayer does not become a transaction, as if a set period of supplication could buy off suffering. Some think that a few days of fasting or a hasty plea will propitiate God, and then they return to former indolence. God is not mocked. Examine yourself: have you been diligent in the health of your own soul, or have you allowed a dullness to creep in, a heaviness that affliction can sometimes provoke? Afflictions test the heart; they can either refine faith or breed resentment. Let this trial instead prompt a swift and fervent return to Him. I say “more diligently,” without procrastination, as Paul sent Epaphroditus to the Philippians, eager to relieve their heaviness. So must you run to the Physician of souls and bodies, casting aside all sin that hinders.
The Deacon cries out, “Holy things for the holy,” separating the healthy sheep from the scabbed. Not that any of us is worthy, but we must not approach carelessly. Seek not only a clean bill of health from earthly physicians, but a cleansed conscience before the Great Healer. For what advantage is it if the body be whole while the soul lies sick with envy, greed, or lust? Theft, for instance, is not born of poverty but of idleness, a vice against nature. Are there such hidden diseases in your household? Let this urgent need for physical healing be a mirror to examine the deeper man.
Do not lose heart. How many, after hearing ten warnings and remaining insensible, have at last been converted by a single word? The seed of faith, though hidden, may yet spring up. Continue in prayer, not as in sport, but with the earnestness that befits those who know both the severity and the mercy of God. He is able to do more than you ask, and He often uses the very hour of desperation to work a complete cure. Only let your trust be anchored not in the vanishing of symptoms, but in the goodness of the One who gave His Son for you. All believers, whether in cloisters or in the marketplace, are called saints through faith. Let the saint in your wife be now your first concern, and then, if it be His will, the fever shall depart as the shadow of a cloud.