Reflections

Not worthy, and still healed

“I am not worthy of the least of all the steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant.” (Genesis 32:10, NRSV)

This morning my doctor called. All twenty-eight samples were clean. No cancer.

I’ve been trying to take that in all morning. I prayed boldly for healing these past weeks, and I meant it. I also tried to hold my hope in God Himself and not in the answer. I told Him I would trust Him either way. Now the answer has come, and what I feel most is not triumph. It’s that I’m not worthy of this.

Jacob prayed those words on his way home to face the brother he had wronged. He wasn’t claiming he’d earned anything. He was looking back over his life and seeing that God’s kindness had been there all along, and that it had never been payment for good behavior.

That’s where I am today. I didn’t earn this by praying the right way or believing hard enough. Plenty of faithful people pray just as hard and hear a different answer, and God has not loved them any less. Healing is a gift. Gifts aren’t wages.

That matters well beyond a doctor’s call. So many of us are wired to believe that what we receive has to be earned, whether it’s a paycheck, a title, or a place at the table. As AI reshapes the work we do, many of us will lose the things we thought proved our worth. When that happens, the gospel says the same thing it says to me this morning. Your worth was never your wage. God’s steadfast love comes first, and it comes to people who don’t deserve it.

The psalmist says, “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits— who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases.” (Psalm 103:2–3, NRSV) I don’t want to forget this. I don’t want to move on to the next worry as though today never happened. My days are still numbered, and only He knows the count. But today He has given me more of them, and I want to spend them gratefully.

If you’re waiting on your own call, about your health, your job, or your future, I can’t promise you the answer I got. I can promise you the One who gives it. He is faithful, and His love is not something you have to earn.

Thank You, Lord. I’m not worthy, and I’m grateful.

— Jay

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).

Jacob's prayer

Andrew Wommack’s God Wants You Well was recommended to me, so I’ve been working through it. The concepts in it are new to me, and hard. I haven’t come to a full conclusion yet, but they raise a question worth wrestling with.

Chapter 1 is where I’ve gotten stuck, and the rest of the book stands on it. Jesus healed to confirm His authority and His message. So, the argument goes, why wouldn’t we expect the same? Jesus said it Himself: “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12, NRSV). From there the book builds: healing is in the atonement, it is always God’s will, and faith is how we receive it.

I take John 14:12 seriously. But I also hear what Jesus said before He ascended: “you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8, NRSV). We are witnesses to Christ, not equals of Christ. His miracles pointed to who He is. Ours, when God grants them, point back to Him. They don’t prove anything about us.

Then, in my Sabbath study, I came across a passage in the Talmud that has stayed with me: “Until Jacob, there was no illness leading up to death; rather, one would die suddenly. Jacob came and prayed for mercy, and illness was brought to the world, allowing one to prepare for his death” (b. Bava Metzia 87a).

The rabbis weren’t saying sickness is good. They were saying that even in illness there can be mercy: time to bless your children, make things right, and get ready to meet God. Jacob did exactly that from his sickbed in Genesis 48.

That fits Moses’ prayer: “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” (Psalm 90:12, NRSV). I’ve watched God use illness and limitation in people I love. He uses it to slow them down, to make them think, and to teach them to count their days. I’ve seen faithful people pray hard and stay sick, and I’ve seen them grow wiser and kinder. I can’t believe their remaining illness was a failure of faith. Paul asked three times and heard, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NRSV). Paul wasn’t short on faith.

So, at least for now, I can’t land where the book lands, that sickness is never from God’s hand, healing is always fully available now, and whatever remains is our shortcoming. That’s too tidy for Scripture and too heavy for the sick.

I still believe God heals. I’ve seen it, and it’s true in my own life. I pleaded with God that this was too much, and He heard my plea and healed my foot. But my cancer is still there. So I see both, right now, in my own life. I pray for it, and I’ll keep asking boldly. But my hope isn’t conditioned on the answer.

This is where it meets the disruption we’re all facing. A lost job and a failing body can feel like the same verdict: you’re not productive anymore. Both can strip away the story that our worth is what we produce. And both can become the place where God teaches us to count our days, and where we find out what our days were for all along.

If you’re sick, or waiting, or out of work this season, you haven’t failed. You may be sitting where Jacob sat, with time to bless, to make peace, and to gain a wise heart. That’s not the absence of God’s mercy. It may be the shape of it.

— Jay

Mentioning Wommack’s book here is not a recommendation. The Talmud passage is b. Bava Metzia 87a (William Davidson translation, Sefaria: https://www.sefaria.org/Bava_Metzia.87a).

The Lord gave

This morning’s Wild at Heart reading from John Eldredge named my exact question. When life hammers us, he writes, most of us land in one of two places: “Either (a) we’re blowing it, or (b) God is holding out on us.” Or some mix of both.

That’s my struggle this fall. My faith isn’t at a loss. I trust God. I’ve yielded the cancer to Him, and the tendon, and whatever comes next. But the question still finds me in the recliner. Did I miss something? Is there a lesson I’m too slow to learn? Or has He simply chosen not to come through the way I’ve asked?

Then I turn to Job, on the worst day of his life. The messengers come one after another, and the last one tells him all his children are dead. Here is what Job does: “Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD’” (Job 1:20–21, NRSV).

He doesn’t pretend. He tears his robe. The grief is real, and he lets it show. But he doesn’t land on (a) or (b). His friends will spend thirty chapters insisting it must be (a), that Job is blowing it somewhere. His wife tells him to curse God, which is (b) said out loud. Job refuses both. He doesn’t accuse himself of a sin he can’t find, and he doesn’t accuse God of holding out. He falls down and worships a God he can’t explain.

That gives me a third place to stand. Not “I’m blowing it.” Not “God is holding out.” But “the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away,” and He is still worthy. Everything I had was a gift to begin with: the health, the strength in my legs, the work, the years. It was never mine to keep. And the One who gave it hasn’t stopped being good just because some of it has been taken.

Eldredge ends with a prayer I’m making mine: “Jesus, take away the fog and the clouds and the veil, and help me to see.” Job didn’t get his answers that day, and I may not get mine. But I can worship in the fog.

If you’re stuck between those two answers this week, over a lost job, a diagnosis, or a prayer that hasn’t been answered yet, there’s another place to land. It’s on the ground with Job, robe torn, still saying: blessed be the name of the LORD.

— Jay

This morning’s reading was John Eldredge’s “What Is Really Going on Here?” (https://wildatheart.org/daily-readings) from Wild at Heart, adapted from his book Waking the Dead.

Life to the full, even here

This morning’s verse of the day was John 10:10: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, NRSV).

I’ll be honest. The first half reads like my week. A cancer diagnosis last month. A ruptured tendon on Thursday. Boot, crutches, and the strange humility of being waited on. Some days it feels like the enemy has been given his way in my life, and I’m left holding the second half of the verse and asking what “abundantly” means from this chair.

I don’t think Jesus meant the two halves as a trade, as if the thief stops so the abundance can start. He said both in the same breath, to sheep who live in a world with thieves in it. Abundant life isn’t the absence of the thief. It’s the presence of the Shepherd. One verse later He says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11, NRSV). The hired hand runs when the wolf comes. The Shepherd doesn’t. He stays, and He pays for it.

Job helps me here too. The accuser was allowed to touch Job’s life, but not without limit. “Only do not stretch out your hand against him” (Job 1:12, NRSV). The enemy is real, but he isn’t sovereign. He works on a leash he didn’t make. Whatever he’s been allowed in my life right now, he hasn’t been given me. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus says. “No one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27–28, NRSV).

So I’m learning to measure abundance differently. Not by what’s still standing in my calendar or my body, but by whose hand I’m in. Life to the full is knowing the Shepherd’s voice when every other voice says I’ve been stopped. It’s peace that doesn’t make sense on paper. It’s my family caring for me and finding they’re loved too. It’s a Kingdom within reach of the recliner.

I won’t pretend I’ve worked this all out. Some mornings the first half of the verse is louder. But I notice Jesus put “I came” right after “the thief comes.” He didn’t wait for the thief to leave. He came into it.

If the thief has been busy in your life too, through a lost job, a diagnosis, or a season that won’t let up, you aren’t outside John 10:10. You’re right where Jesus spoke it. Listen for the Shepherd’s voice. He hasn’t run.

— Jay

Yielded and still

On Thursday a tendon tore in my right heel. Now I’m on crutches, in a boot, hobbling from chair to chair. That’s on top of the cancer and everything else this season already holds.

Here’s where I am. God keeps filling me with peace, even though. It’s the even though that I wrestle with. I settled the big question already: whatever comes of the cancer or any of my health, I’ve yielded to His will, and I trust Him. What I keep asking is what it’s for. I’ve been seeking His purpose, ready to do anything He asks, and here I am, stopped. I can’t do much at all, and other people have to wait on me. How is God using me in this?

This week Renovaré sent a letter by Brian Morykon, At Hand, on Jesus’ first message: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mark 1:15, NRSV). He points out that “near” doesn’t mean “coming soon.” It means within reach, the way the pen on your desk is within reach. The Kingdom doesn’t wait for me to be useful again. It’s at hand in the recliner and on the crutches, the same as it was at the head of the conference table.

Then I think of the night Jesus knelt with a basin and a towel. Peter wanted no part of it: “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8, NRSV). Peter wanted to serve. He didn’t want to be served. Neither do I. Yet Jesus told him that being served was part of belonging to Him.

So maybe part of the answer, for now, is this. When I let my family care for me, I give them a way to love their neighbor, and that neighbor is me. I get to practice receiving grace I can’t earn, which was always the only kind there was. And I learn, slowly, what I keep telling the Church to be ready for. Our worth before God was never in what we produce. If that’s true for the worker whose job disappears, it’s true for the man in the boot.

The letter closed with an old hymn, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” that I can’t shake: “Mold me and make me after Thy will, while I am waiting, yielded and still.”

Waiting. Yielded. Still. I didn’t choose stillness, but I can choose to be yielded in it. I don’t know yet what He’s doing with this season. I do know the Kingdom is within reach right here, and that the One who knelt with the towel has not set me aside.

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, in this chair, today.

— Jay

Mercy for the wavering

Jude is one of the fiercest little letters in the Bible.

He writes to “contend for the faith.” He warns about false teachers, grumblers, people who flatter for advantage. And then, near the end, almost in the same breath, he turns gentle:

“keep yourselves in the love of God; look forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. And have mercy on some who are wavering” (Jude 21–22, NRSV).

Wavering. Not walking away. Not mocking. Just unsteady — the way you feel when the floor moves under you and you are not sure yet what is still holding.

I have been one of the wavering more than once. This fall included. Not about whether God is real. About whether He is near on an ordinary weekday when the news is hard and the decisions do not wait. I have sat in church with a steady face and an unsteady heart, and I suspect I was not the only one in the row.

A lot of people are going to waver in the years ahead. Not loudly. Quietly. The engineer whose role gets rewritten. The graduate who sends the two-hundredth application. The father who stops tithing after the layoff and cannot quite say why. Most of them will not announce a crisis of faith. They will just start sitting a little farther back.

Our instinct, when someone wavers, is to fix them fast. Jude does not start there. He says mercy. And he puts it right after telling us to keep ourselves in the love of God and to look forward to mercy ourselves. That order matters to me. The people who show mercy to the wavering are people who know they are still waiting on mercy too. Nobody gets to hand it out from above.

So this is the invitation, both directions.

If you are wavering this week, you are not disqualified. Jude wrote a sentence with you in it. You do not have to tidy your doubts before you walk back in.

If you are steady this week, look down the row. Find the one sitting a little farther back. Do not lead with an argument. Lead with a meal, a phone call, a question you actually wait to hear answered. Mercy first. There is time for the rest.

The Church does not need to be a room for the unshaken. It needs to be the place where the shaken are held — kept in the love of God, together, until the mercy we are all looking forward to arrives.

— Jay