“Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,’ he said. ‘Be clean!’ Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured” (Mark 1:41-42, NIV 1984).

Thus far he had beaten two cancers, along with chronic hepatitis and severe peripheral vascular disease.
I told him, “You have had more bad happen to you than most anybody I know. You are really an overcomer. Why do you think God has been so good to you?”
“Grace,” he said. “God has just treated me special. I know lots of other folks who had what I got and they didn’t make it.”
“Why are you special?” I asked.
“No reason. I don’t deserve it.”

Why do some people win and some people lose, if God’s grace is present for all?

Certainly, it is by God’s grace that any of us are healed—for Adam’s act in Eden made this a world of entropy.

But God’s grace in healing is active and visible. I’ve seen it in my own life and in the lives of many patients. So why not everyone? Why must I see miraculous healings in the same clinic day that I comfort grief-stricken loved ones, though the same faith burns within each heart?

I used to describe my foundational understanding of God’s place in suffering as, “He knows; He cares; He can.”

I’ve edited this understanding as I have watched the truth of life. Now it is clear to me, “He knows; He cares; He can; and, He chooses.”

And, I thank God He does, for the Creator of all reminds us: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9, NIV 1984).

We can never understand why some who are faithful suffer without relief on this side of Glory and some are healed, but we can let Him choose.

Grateful for His grace. Trusting when the night comes.

Dear God,
Thank You for Your healing, for the miraculous days it is not required, and for Your decision born in love when the healing does not come.
Amen