Coffee Break ver. 1.35

Jan shared a personal experience of being healed by prayer. Her father got better and her family believes it is all through the Lord's power. She then wants to know:


Being a doctor, I sometimes feel that I've seen it all. I've seen patients die. I've seen families lose hope. My own father died of cancer 8 years ago (yesterday was his anniversary).

I know that we doctors can only do our best, that the final outcome is still not up to us. There are times when we have had to tell the family that there is really nothing more that we can do.

My father lived for almost 2 years after being diagnosed with late stage lung cancer. Looking back, I feel that it was really the Lord's will that he died when he did, because cancer and chemotherapy had already taken its toll on his body. He was constantly have aches and pains that we could only imagine.

My mother rediscovered prayer after my father died. She's a Buddhist but she was not really very actively practicing before. Her close friends urged her to join the prayers and ceremonies for the dead. I saw her emerge from her depression via prayers.

She was again plunged into a series of deaths after that, and each time, prayers saved her.

The last time was back in December 2004, when her brother and his family vacationed in Thailand. The shocking after-Christmas news was that they were there when the tsunami struck. Prayers didn't save the lives of my uncle and my cousins, but they did help us put things into perspective and helped mom through her extreme grief.

I'm so sorry, Jan, that this may not be what you expected, but I'd like to say that sometimes it's really not up to us. Things happen, and though they may seem like God has forsaken us, in truth, he has not. We don't know what his plans are, but we do know that God knows best.