Chapter 46 Lesson on Prayer

Sometimes, people could use some education about prayer. Take Mrs. Cusik, for instance. She was wanting me to prayer for miraculous healing from cancer when it was obvious to me that what she really needed was healing for her soul.

I met Mrs. Cusik my first Sabbath in Huntington. She was miserable. You couldn’t miss it. It was written all over her face. And the look never changed. When I visited, she told me her story.
Her mother had become an Adventist when Mrs. Cusik was five. Her dad allowed mom to raised the kids as Adventists. When Mrs. Cusik turned seventeen, she left home and church and God. She drank and smoked and partied. She married and had kids. Later she got a job. Then, when she was sixty-three she came back to church and God.
But her conversion brought her no peace. She could not get past her regret at all the wasted years. She was eighty-one when I first began listening to her story. She had been rebaptized eighteen years ago. She had been coming to church for eighteen years, singing hymns about God’s love, taking Communion, listening to sermons. And for eighteen years she had been miserable, and, in her mind, unforgiven.
I visited her occasionally. And always our conversation circled back to laments about the lost years. It was not possible that God could ever really, truly forgive her. She had deliberately, knowingly, rebelled. She had failed to raise her children right. No amount of lecturing, counseling, praying, Bible quoting by me made any difference. She was sure she was lost. She came to church and nursed her guilt.
She was diagnosed with lung cancer. It had already metastasized. There was no point in doing surgery. They did radiation to shrink the tumor in her lung. Then watched. She lost weight. When she wasn’t in the hospital she was at her daughter’s home. As I got acquainted with her daughter, I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the picture I had in my mind from Mrs. Cusik’s constant laments about failing to lead her children in the right path and what I actually observed in the life of her daughter. Her daughter was pleasant, attentive, careful of her mother’s needs.
Mrs. Cusik was back in the hospital. I visited her on a Friday. She was a mere bag of bones. She had lost so much weight that I would not have recognized her if her name had not been on the foot of her bed. Her daughter had called me. “I don't think Mom has much more time.” she said.
As I stood beside the bed, Mrs. Cusik opened her eyes. Her face lighted up. She was glad to see me. I took her hand. She gripped it with surprising strength.
“I’m so glad you came. I want you to pray for me.”
“I’d be honored to do that.”
“I want you to pray that God will heal me of this cancer.”
I hesitated. She was clearly dying. Her daughter and I had already talked a little bit about her funeral. Praying for healing seemed to me like a trick to avoid facing reality.
“Mrs. Cusik,” I answered, “I think what you really need is to make your peace with God. Let me pray that God will give you peace and enable you to rest in his mercy and forgiveness.”
“No, I want you to pray that I will get well. I am not ready to die. I need God to cure me of this cancer.”
“Mrs. Cusik, I will pray for your healing if that’s what you want. But nobody lives forever in this world. God offers such rich promises of forgiveness, pardon and redemption. If you will accept it, God can give you peace of mind and reassurance right now. You don’t have to wait.”
“Pastor, you know I wasted all those years . . . more than forty years I lived in the world. Forty years I turned my back on him. . . .” Her eyes teared up. “Forty-five years, actually. How can he ever forgive me? How can I make up for misleading my children? I want you to pray God will cure me of this cancer.”
I yielded. “Okay, Mrs. Cusik, let’s pray.”
I wrapped her hand in both of mine and prayed aloud. “Our Father in heaven, thank you for loving Mrs. Cusik and giving her a chance to be converted and live for you. Thank you for your mercy and forgiveness. Thank you for forgiving her for her forty-five years of doing her own thing and rejecting your love and your law. Please help her to trust in your mercy and pardon.
“Now, Lord, Mrs. Cusik has asked me to pray that you will heal her cancer. I don’t think that what she really needs. I think she needs to accept your mercy and grace and let go of her insistence that you heal her, but she wants me to ask you to heal her. So because she has asked me to do so, I pray that you will heal her. I pray that you will send this cancer into remission. I pray that she can get out of this hospital and return to her children. In Jesus name, Amen.”
We opened our eyes. “I’ll see you again soon,” I promised, squeezed her hand and left.
I should have visited her the next day, Saturday, but I was at the Babylon Church that week and with all the activity I completely forgot about Mrs. Cusik. Sunday I was busy. Finally late Monday morning, I suddenly remembered Mrs. Cusik. I headed to the hospital. Her bed was empty. Had they moved her to intensive care? Had she died? I went to the nurses’ station.
“What happened to Mrs. Cusik?”
“She went home yesterday.”
I was astonished the hospital would have released her in her extreme condition, but I figured she wanted to die at home. I drove to her daughter’s house. The daughter answered the door and invited me in. “Mother will be glad to see you.”
Mrs. Cusik was sitting in an easy chair in the living room, looking amazingly well. I pulled a chair over and sat down beside her.
“How are you?” I asked, still trying to adjust to the fact that she was sitting up and not comatose in bed.
“Oh, not so good,” she complained. “I still have to use this silly walker to get around the house. I’m not as strong as I should be.”
“Mrs. Cusik,” I sputtered. “When I last saw you in the hospital, I thought you were dying. The nurses thought you were dying. Your family thought you were dying. Isn’t that right?” I said, turning to her daughter.
She nodded her head.
“None of us thought you’d ever get out of bed again” I continued scolding her. “And here you are, complaining about using a walker!!!
“You better repent of your ingratitude. You’ve just experienced a miracle. You better tell God you’re sorry for not paying attention to his miracle.”
She smiled sheepishly. “Well, all right.”
I prayer again. “God in heaven, thank you for this wonderful miracle. Thank you for giving Sister Cusik more time to be with her family. Give her joy and peace. Give her rest in your mercy and grace. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
I left amazed. Amazed at Mrs. Cusik's recovery. Amazed even more, perhaps, at God's willingness to involve me, an unbelieving pastor whose prayer actually voice disbelief, in such a miracle. What did such a healing after such a prayer teach about the nature of prayer?
God gave Mrs. Cusik what she wanted, not what I could see so clearly she needed. He gave her three more years. During those extra years she came to trust in forgiveness and grace. She died at peace.