We often hear prayers for successful healing and other stories of people who have had miraculous healings. I recently learned that a friend who had had tumors in various places on his body had found out that the tumors had completely disappeared. His doctors were stunned and couldn’t explain it.
While that was very good news, it may also have shown the power of healing prayers. My friend had asked our group to pray for his healing and we did. But of course, we can never be sure how much our prayers contributed to the disappearance of the tumors and how much it was his wonderful attitude and philosophy of life and health that was responsible for the miracle.
As we prayed, treated, meditated, for healing, what we really wanted was a cure. There is a very big difference between curing and healing, although the lines between them are often blurred. When I pray and meditate for a loved one who has a problem, be it physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise, I begin by asking for healing.
To me, healing means reaching a point of wholeness and peace, no matter what the physical condition or situation. I believe that it is possible to have a terminal illness, but be cured even if the illness ultimately takes life. On the other hand, being cured means that the disease is gone or “fixed.”
Sometimes a person who survives something as serious as cancer needs time to heal, even if he is cured, like my friend was cured of his tumors. Healing will mean taking the time to think about what happened and come to conclusions about life and death and consider the lessons learned from the experience. While a cure can be found in a short period of time, healing can take longer but lead to a better quality of life.
Healing is closure, but it does not mean that the lessons learned are over or that more cannot be learned. Healing leads to personal and spiritual growth. Healing means we can live longer and work on healing. Sometimes I think we spend our whole lives healing.
While healing comes from an external source, like a wonder drug, healing always comes from the same source, from within. When a loved one is sick or dying, we first want a cure, so as not to lose them, but finally, we realize that death is inevitable and what we all really need in the end is healing. From a place of fulfillment we can face all the challenges of life.
