You pray for your son’s restoration of body, mind, and spirit, and you ask rightly, for every good gift descends from above. Yet consider: not all the wealth of a kingdom can heal a body when the Maker has determined otherwise. If a king, with all his diadems and treasures, cannot command a sickly frame to recover, how much less can our own pleading, apart from the divine will, secure it? The healing you desire is not wrong, but let your prayer ascend with a far greater hunger. Seek first the spirit’s renewal; all else will be added as the Physician sees fit.
The body, indeed, is not evil, it can become an arm of righteousness, a weapon in the Spirit’s hand. But what profit is a sound body if the soul lies in a palsy of sin? The true restoration begins within. When the Spirit takes possession, Christ Himself indwells; and where Christ is, there the body becomes dead to the tyranny of sin, not its essence, but its viciousness. That is a mortifying far more blessed than any earthly cure. For if the inner man is raised up, if the mind is renewed in the spirit after the image of its Creator, then patience, faith, and peace flower naturally. They are not prizes you earn by grasping, but fruits the Spirit bears when the soil of the heart is broken up by repentance.
Therefore, while you ask for power to restore, know that the truest power is the sword of the Spirit, which cuts away the gangrene of worldly desires and lays the soul bare before the Healer. The Lord often permits bodily weakness precisely that the spirit may grow strong, that the chains of self-reliance be snapped. Will you have your son recover only to cling to this fleeting life, or rather to be held fast by Christ? Pray that his sickness, if it must remain, become a holocaust, a living sacrifice, consuming in him every unreasonable lust, every anxious fear, leaving only the pure gold of faith. The martyrs’ crown was not won by ease, but by dying daily; and sometimes the sickbed is a quieter arena where the same crown is bestowed.
What then? Shall you cease to ask for the body? By no means. Cry out with the father of old, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” But let your cry always yield to this: that whether in health or in infirmity, your son be found in Christ, having that righteousness which is by faith. If the Spirit quickens him, he is already living an immortal life, holding the earnest of the resurrection. And if the flesh should languish, yet the inner man will run and not be weary. True healing does not consist in adding something we lack, but in stripping off the old man with his affections and lusts. Convince the soul of this, and you have cured a malady deeper than any bodily ailment.
So take courage. Commend your son to the God who is Spirit, offering worship not with calves and incense but with a broken and contrite heart. Beseech Him to circumcise the mind, to slay the passions, to fashion a new man after His own likeness. When once the spirit is made whole, the body’s fate becomes a light thing. And remember that even those who have stumbled and fallen, after many mighty works, can be restored if they will shake off slumber. There is no wound the Physician cannot bind up, provided we do not love the sickness. May your son be numbered among those whose bodies become temples of the Holy Ghost, and may you both learn that He who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. To this end, let your prayers be unceasing, but ever in submission to the great Captain of our salvation, who alone knows what leads each soul to the haven of eternal life.