Jesus healed many people, more than the Gospel stories name. But those same people eventually died. And he was not everywhere, so many were not healed. When he said “Your faith has healed you.,” it wasn’t their faith in healing, but their faith in a God that is for us and with us.  But that is the same God that let Jesus die on the cross. That is the same God that let Jesus feel abandoned on the cross. But Jesus’ faith ultimately was in a God that loves and wants the best for us in eternity.  The best is being like Jesus who  ultimately trusts God and says, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”  

American faith often is that God should make us healthy, wealthy, and happy here on Earth.  But our journey here is not heaven, it’s  a school. It’s a journey from the dependency and need of a baby  being transformed into the ability to love another and ultimately all others more than ourself.  That takes faith not in healing, but in God’s love for us that will ultimately be grace for that journey.

Jesus had to take that same journey. In fact his journey is the map for ours. 

I have experienced and witnessed healings. But my mother died by inches over fourteen miserable years with Alzheimer’s.  And I was helpless to make it better no matter how hard I tried and  toward the end I neglected her because I couldn’t bear it. Ultimately I was able to be with her as she died for eleven days and witnessed not healing, but some sort of peace. When my husband of almost sixty years was dying, I was able only through grace to take care of him and to not lose it myself. That part of the journey was a gift for me through giving me the grace to love him in ways I did not think I was capable of managing. And God gave me the grace to let go at he end.  He died from many health issues, but not from the one we feared most. Suffering and sorrow and growing in love in and through it and ultimately like Jesus trusting in death, our own and our loved one’s, is part of the journey of the school of life. We follow in the footsteps of Jesus.  The healings teach us that when we are not healed, it’s part of both the learning to trust God and growing in love and in letting go of our delusion that this life is supposed to be heaven.