I enjoy a good theological discussion, the kind where you can ask difficult questions without anyone questioning your love for God. Recently, I read Andrew Murray on healing and Hannah Whitall Smith on suffering, and really wanted to put them in a room together.
When we’re sick, should we trust God to heal us or trust that he’s working through not healing us? Can we do both? Their writings became the fuel for this imagined conversation. I supplied the couches, the fire, and a friend whose illness makes the question more than theoretical.
The fire had burned low on one side of the grate, leaving a ridge of glowing coals underneath the logs. Hannah and Andrew sat on opposite couches, their tea steeping between them.
Hannah held the letter, smoothing the fold with her thumb. Her friend had written little about the pain itself. Most of her words concerned her efforts to bear it faithfully.
“She seems almost to be apologizing for being ill,” she said, passing the letter to Andrew.
He turned the page over. “She’s started to wonder whether she ought to stop praying for recovery altogether.”
“Maybe she’s tired of wondering what she’s done wrong,” Hannah said as she reached for her teacup.
“I should like to relieve her of that fear. But I should not like to relieve her of hope.”
“Nor should I.”
Andrew laid the letter where they could both see it.
“I have tried to encourage her to look beyond what is presently visible,” said Hannah as she stared into the fire. We speak of earthly cares as a heavenly discipline, but I believe they may be something better still, God’s chariots, sent to carry the soul to the very heights for which it has been longing and praying.
“Of course, they don’t look like chariots. They look like suffering, disappointment, misunderstanding, unkindness, all the things that seem about to crush you. The struggle is visible; the chariot of God is invisible.
“I think of Elisha’s servant. He could see the army surrounding them, and he was terrified. Then Elisha asked that his eyes might be opened. I should like to ask the same for our friend.”
“But would you place her sickness among those chariots?” Andrew asked.
“Yes. Would you exclude it?”
He considered the question well before answering.
“I would distinguish it from the sufferings God expressly told his disciples to bear. He taught them to take up their crosses. He prepared them for persecution. But when he encountered the sick, he healed them. He never taught a sick person to resign himself to being sick.
“How easily do we recognize sin as something from which Christ delivers us, but speak of sickness as though it were a proof of God’s love, and something we should patiently endure. I can’t pass over the difference between that teaching and what we see in the life of Jesus. Everywhere he went, his compassion reached the body as well as the soul.”
“Yet our friend’s illness has continued,” Hannah said. “We have to have something to tell her about the days in which she has prayed and remains unwell.”
“Certainly,” he replied. “But I would begin with what Christ has revealed of himself. Think about the paralytic. First, he says to him, “Your sins are forgiven,” then, “Rise and walk.” The Savior attended to the whole man. It was the healing that made visible his authority to forgive.
“We have heard forgiveness preached so continually that a troubled soul easily comes to Christ expecting pardon. But how rarely have we encouraged the same confidence concerning the body? We hesitate, qualify, and prepare ourselves for disappointment. I would have our friend know that Christ has not ceased to be the Savior of the whole person.”
Hannah listened without interrupting. When he had finished, she returned to his first question.
“You asked whether I would include sickness among God’s chariots. I cannot exclude an affliction just because it comes in an unwelcome form. The chariot is generally some outward loss or trial or disappointment, something grievous rather than joyous. It may even come through human cruelty or neglect. No matter its appearance, it cannot tell us all that God may accomplish through it.
“Of course, I will pray for our friend to recover. But I will also pray that her eyes might be opened to what God has for her where she is. The difficulty is visible enough. She needs no assistance seeing that. What she may not see is that this very circumstance can carry her nearer to him.”
Murray shook his head slightly.
“But why should we call the circumstance a chariot sent by God? That is where I hesitate. You are asking her to receive the illness as a vehicle of his love. I am asking her to look to Christ for deliverance from it. Those expectations will lead her to approach the same bed very differently.”
“They may,” Hannah said. “Though both begin with the conviction that she is in his care.”
“Yes, but that conviction has to take its character from what he has shown us. When Jesus sent his disciples to preach, he also commanded them to heal. When he answered the question of whether he was the one who should come, he pointed to the blind receiving their sight and the lame walking. Healing belonged to the announcement of his kingdom. Surely that should shape what we encourage her to expect.”
“And does it tell us what she must believe about this afternoon?” she asked.
The question stopped him.
Hannah continued more quietly.
“Suppose she has prayed this morning with all the confidence she possesses. By afternoon, the pain is worse. Must the day become another anxious inquiry into why deliverance has not come? I would have something better for her to do with those hours.
She might receive them as a chariot, something God can use to carry her nearer to himself. Even a small trial can crush us into misery when we lie down beneath it. But we can also receive it as something God can make carry us onward. I would encourage her to believe that her soul need not remain beneath the weight of her circumstances.”
“Then you also ask something of her faith,” Murray said.
“Yes, I do.”
“You ask her to believe that the trial can carry her.”
“I do.”
“And I ask her to believe that Christ can deliver her.”
For a moment, neither spoke. The resemblance had become clearer than either had intended.
Then Murray said, “But I must press you on this. If she believes the illness has been sent to carry her into a blessing, will she feel free to ask that it be taken away? Mightn't she start to regard the desire for recovery as an unwillingness to go where God is taking her?”
Hannah looked down at the letter, considering this eventuality.
“I should not wish her to think that. I have no desire to keep her in bed. But neither would I have her believe that she has to leave it before she can find the blessing of God.
“The heavenly places of which I speak are inward. The road to them is inward also, though the thing that carries us along it may be an outward trouble. She might be unable to change what has happened to her, but discover that she can live with God differently within it. That is the possibility I want her to see.”
“And if she cannot?”
Hannah looked up from her teacup.
“If the trial continues to grieve her,” Murray said, “and she finds no sense of being carried upward? You say that even the smallest trials may crush us if we let them. Might she hear that her misery is now another failure for which she must answer?”
“That is a fair question.”
She allowed it to remain between them for a moment.
“I want only to open a possibility to her, not give her another reason for despair. I want her to know that what appears ready to crush her is still subject to God. Even when the chariot comes through another person’s malice or neglect, his love has not deserted her.”
“Then I think we have to both take care,” Murray said. “You don’t want her to feel accused because she remains sorrowful. Nor do I want her to feel accused because she remains sick. I would turn her attention toward the compassion of Christ. She has spent enough time considering herself.”
At the grate, a piece of charred wood gave way. Hannah waited until it had fallen.
“There is something else in her letter,” she said. “She asks what she ought to do. She asks it three times.”
Murray reached for the page again.
“She might just mean whether she should send for another physician.”
“Maybe. But when I last saw her, she asked whether she was submitting properly. Before that, she asked whether she was believing properly. I am afraid she has started to regard her illness as a question she has to answer correctly before God will help her.”
He read the lines again, more slowly this time.
“I should not want our discussion to become one more examination,” he said, his eyes on the paper.
“Neither should I. But we do disagree, Andrew. You fear that I may reconcile her to an affliction from which Christ would deliver her. I fear that your expectation of deliverance may leave her unable to receive the days in which she is still afflicted.”
“Yes,” he said. “That is our disagreement.”
“And she will have to live those days while we continue it.”
Murray folded the letter along its existing crease and laid it on the table between them.
“Then when we visit, I shall ask whether she would like us to pray for her healing.”
“She will.”
“And you will join me?”
“Gladly.”
She took a sip of tea as Andrew spoke.
“Afterward, I should like her to tell us what has become hardest.”
Hannah nodded. “We may have to wait a little. She has grown accustomed to encouraging her visitors.”
Outside, the wind stirred against the windows. Andrew reached for his neglected tea and tasted it without noticing that it had gone cold.
“Thursday, then?”
“Thursday.”
“I still cannot call the sickness God’s chariot,” he added.
“And I cannot think that she must recover before it can carry her nearer to him,” she responded.
“No,” Murray said. “I did not suppose we have settled it.”
“But I think we may be better prepared to listen to her.”
(An imagined conversation adapted from Andrew Murray’s “Pardon and Healing” and Hannah Whitall Smith’s writing on God’s chariots. Their wording has been condensed and made conversational; the setting, friend, actions, questions, and connecting dialogue are invented.)