I hear your cry for your son, and my soul groans with you. A parent's love is a furnace, and when your child lies in pain, it burns more fiercely than any flame. How rightly you call him your son, for as the apostle says of one begotten in his trials, “I have begotten him,” so you have a bond forged in the very depths of your heart. You ache to see his body mended, his breathing free. This is no small thing; the Master Himself felt compassion for the ill, healing them not from afar only, but drawing near to their suffering. He asked of the blind men, “Believe ye that I am able to do this?” Observe: He did not say, “Believe ye that I am able to ask the Father,” but “that I am able to do this.” For He is the Son of the Unoriginate God, and He has authority over every sickness.
Yet consider how the Son of God became also Son of David, that He might make you, a servant, a child of God. He suffered a slave to be father to Him, so that the Lord might become Father to you. This same Lord who receives your prayer is your brother and your son’s healer. He is not a king of Israel only, but of all the world. Bring to Him, then, a faith worthy of His power; not a faith that merely seeks the removal of illness, but one that trusts Him even when the answer is delayed. For some He healed at once; others He led first through affliction so that their souls might shine brighter than their bodies ever could.
Do not cease to entreat Him, as the Canaanite woman who would not be silenced, but continue to cry, “Son of David, have mercy on my son!” Yet let your heart also say, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.” The Lord who gave His own Son for you knows when to give health and when to allow sorrow that works an eternal weight of glory. He may be using this very weakness to draw your son nearer, to teach you both to long for the body that will never decay.
Join your prayers with mine, and with the whole Church. We will fall before the Physician of souls and bodies, pleading for mercy, because teachers and children alike stand in need of it. And if it seems the answer tarries, remember: the judgment that seems delayed is a mercy, giving time for the washing away of transgressions. So also, a healing postponed can become the ground of a deeper holiness. Love your son enough to desire not merely his temporary ease but his eternal joy. I will groan with you until we see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.