Although I hardly knew Jesus, He knew me inside out.
Would Jesus heal Naomi? I had no doubt that Jesus had the power to heal her but I kept wondering if that was indeed His will. That horrid scene of the deceased child being transferred out of the Shanghai ICU in that blue body bag was still fresh in my mind. I also remembered the child who lay next to Naomi in the Singapore ICU. One day her bed was empty and we were told she had passed away. It was shocking news. Evidently, not every child got healed.
Jester did get healed. She was terminally ill but Jesus came and healed her. Why did He heal certain people and others not? If He healed someone, then for what reason? When Jester was praying for Paulina, John chapter 11 verse 4 popped up in Jester's mind. Why did that happen? That verse read: “This illness is not unto death". Did the fact that this verse emerged at that time of prayer indeed mean it applied to Naomi? Did it mean that Naomi would not remain in her disabled state for the rest of her life? Would she at some point in the hopefully nearby future recover and resume life like it was before? Or did it simply mean that Naomi would stay like she was but that her illness would not be the cause of her eventual death? Or did this verse have nothing to do with Naomi at all? When I looked the verse up in the Bible, it turned out to be quite a bit longer:
“This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.” (John 11:4)
If what had happened with Naomi would ultimately glorify Jesus then it indeed made sense to interpret this verse as a comforting answer to our questions and worries about the prospects of her recovery. Deep down, I still felt that strange calmness and I still believed Naomi would be "all right" again. It was nothing more than a feeling but it had remained with me all this time. Keen to better understand the text, I read John chapter 11 several times and underlined the things that stood out for me. This is nearly the entire chapter:
Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him, saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it he said, “This illness is not unto death; it is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by means of it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was. Then after this he said to the disciples, “Let us go into Judea again.” The disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?” Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any one walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if any one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” Thus he spoke, and then he said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep.” The disciples said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that he meant taking rest in sleep. Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead; and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary sat in the house. Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.” When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying quietly, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. Then Mary, when she came where Jesus was and saw him, fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled; and he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb; it was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odour, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?” So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. I knew that thou hearest me always, but I have said this on account of the people standing by, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus did, believed in him.
I found this a very impactful reading. I could feel Jesus was a person full of love and compassion, never denying anyone healing and always doing His Father's will, for the glory of God. If He could bring dead people back to life, then He Himself had to be very much alive: back then, now and forever.
It finally dawned on me: Jesus, whom I had ignored my entire life, had also called me out of my cave! It struck me that it was Jesus who wanted me to believe and follow Him.
Suddenly, as if viewing scenes from a movie in quick succession, things became very clear. Two years earlier, Jesus had come to support me, to hold my hand as it were, because He knew that five days later I would experience the most frightening moment of my life. That Friday night, He was there, making sure we would find out that Naomi suffered a cardiac arrest. When I was going mad in that ambulance, Jesus was there with us, protecting Naomi. When Naomi was in the resuscitation room, He was there too, breathing live into her. When I stood alone in that hallway, He stood by my side, and when I pleaded with God not to let Naomi die, He answered my prayer. When we travelled to Singapore, He was with us the entire trip. When Naomi suffered three more cardiac arrests, He was at her bedside. When Naomi was operated, He was in the room guiding the doctors and keeping Naomi safe. I realised Jesus had been with us all this time, gently looking after us. It was an amazing, consoling and hope inspiring realisation. I felt that if Paulina and I believed like Martha, we would also see the glory of God.
What next dawned on me was that although I hardly knew Jesus, He clearly knew me inside out. He precisely knew how to get through to me. Without bluntly spelling things out, He allowed me to discover the truth on my own, which He knew would work best for me. He had patiently given me time to figure things out, knowing full well that what I was about to learn would sink in embarrassingly slowly. Looking back, I felt everything had been meticulously orchestrated. Jesus had been way ahead of me, just like He had been ahead of Lazarus’ sisters, even though they thought He came too late. They wanted Jesus to heal their brother but Lazarus died before He arrived. Jesus, however, never intended to "just" heal Lazarus. Surely, a miraculous healing would have been amazing but Jesus had something substantially better in mind: a resurrection!
It showed me that Jesus' ways are different from ours and that He has the will and power to turn even the worst situations into opportunities to (re)connect people with Him. That made me think. All this time, I had wondered why an innocent 6-year old girl like Naomi had to endure such terrible suffering. The reading about Lazarus had given me a glimpse of the answer: if a close friend of Jesus suffered a severe illness and died, then perhaps it were those especially dear to Jesus to whom it belonged to endure such suffering. It remained very difficult to see Naomi unable to speak, unable to eat and drink, unable to sit, stand, let alone walk, but this chapter about Lazarus left no doubt about there being a greater good and purpose in suffering. In that sense, what Lazarus went through foreshadowed Jesus' own suffering, death and resurrection, which of course had much greater impact and purpose: the salvation of all mankind and the invitation to eternal life with God.
Perhaps Naomi's suffering would ultimately lead her and us as a family to something greater as well. Jesus had already drawn me to the greatest of all: Himself. Given my former stance on Christianity, that in itself was a miracle. As of that moment, I longed to walk beside Jesus instead of miles behind. I was convinced He had a great plan for Naomi, for our family and for myself, and I wanted to cooperate with Him, even though I had no idea how. Considering all we had experienced, and how those experiences had changed me, and surely after reading the Gospel and learning about how Jesus turns bad into good, I wrote down the following points:
It's all right
Naomi will recover ("This sickness is not unto death”)
Her life is temporarily frozen but I feel that ice is slowly melting
Here comes the Sun (Jesus)
Jesus will heal Naomi
What happened to her provides an opportunity to display the glory of God and the power of the Son of God
Her illness will give occasion for a miracle whereby we (and maybe family, friends or others) be brought to believe in Jesus, the Son who was sent by the Father to save mankind
Could I really expect Jesus to heal Naomi? Did I expect too much? Jesus also asked Martha to have a much greater expectation when He asked her to believe that He Himself was the resurrection and the life. Jesus did not merely claim that but once Martha believed, He decisively manifested His divinity and power over both life and death by resurrecting a man who had been dead for four days and whose body had started to decompose. Jesus showed great love, friendship, sorrow and compassion. He weeped. I knew He loved Naomi too and I felt confident that, against all odds and at the appropriate time, He would restore her body and make her whole again.
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