Article June 11, 2012 Issue

The immediacy of healing

Betsie Ellington Tegtmeyer

They’re doing some construction work on the roads in our community, and a sign I passed the other day said, “Expect delays.” I got to thinking about that directive in relation to healing. It occurred to me that we may often “expect delays” in healing. After all, don’t we sometimes assume a condition is going to take a certain amount of time to be resolved, even through prayer?

Thinking about this, I turned to the opposite idea: immediacy. It’s interesting to note that the word immediate, and its derivatives, are not used in the Bible until the book of Matthew. Immediate healings by Jesus and his disciples were quite commonplace. Throughout the Gospels there are numerous references to immediate healing:

• “Immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8:3).
• “Immediately their eyes received sight” (Matthew 20:34).
• “Immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth” (Mark 2:12).
• “Immediately her issue of blood stanched” (Luke 8:44).