February 11
The Healing Touch
In the Hour of Silence"They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
I CRAVE this supernatural power to save and bless. It is not knowledge that the world needs. It is not eloquent speech. It is not soldierly courage and achievement. It is not amusement and pleasure. More than anything beside, the world needs healing. More than anyone else, it calls out for the physician.
There are diseases worse and deeper than bodily maladies. There are stings of conscience. There is deadness of heart. There are errors of life. There is the blindness that cannot see God's presence, and the deafness to His voice, and the paralysis of our energies in His service. There is the feverish fire of passion that consumes the soul. There is the hideous inner leprosy that defiles all the nature.
Many around me are stricken with these fatal sicknesses. May Jesus accomplish His sweet works of recovery, not only through His written Word and His almighty Spirit, but through me, His living and loving disciple.
May the very sight of what the Christ has done for me—the heaven-sent quiet, the satisfaction, the strength, the strange new hope, He has imparted to my life—entice and draw some weary hearts to Him.
And may my lips, like my Master's, drop ointment and balm into the sorely wounded souls. Through them let His restoring efficacy flow without let or hindrance to those who require it mournfully.
I would seek grace so to live and so to speak that, when I lay hands on the sick, the sick shall recover. This very day I must arise, "and to port some lost, complaining seaman pilot home."