Sequel

I really don't like to use a blog post this way (an editor once reminded, in an email rejecting my essay, that a magazine column is to be thought of as precious real estate), but a reader brought to my attention that I had said I would report back about the MRI follow-up to my iffy mammograms. Well the MRI came back negative, glory to God, which is a nice reprieve from the inevitable.

My temptation is to conclude that the MRI proved I never had cancer, and maybe also proved the thesis that $210 billion a year is spent on testing prompted more by liability concerns than medical concerns. I will never know.

But on the other hand I had godly people praying for me, and there was some kind of spot on my X-ray, and there are two kinds of things you never read about in the news: the planes that land safely and the healings by God of not-yet diagnosed ailments.

Healing is a front-burner issue with me these days, for a variety of reasons. Psalm 103 says God "heals all your diseases." In Exodus 15:26 God even goes so far as to join his own name to his covenant promise of healing. He is "Jehovah Rapha." The God who acts directly in all things, who "cause[s] the grass to grow for the livestock" (Psalm 104:14), also acts directly in all our healings, even the paper cut you got today while opening your mail. Nor a hair falls from your head without his say-so. I am figuring that it's no bigger a deal for God to heal a headache than a brain cancer, and so I pray for both with equal equanimity these days, notwithstanding the "cessationist" quarrel. Nothing else makes sense to me.

Thank you, dear reader, for your concern.

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