We asked contributor to share some thoughts on the practice of relying on God for healing in today's World.
Recently My Wife and I were chatting with a woman who was changing her profession because of a health problem considered incurable. We asked her if she had tried spiritual healing. She hadn't, but she said she believed in it because she had seen it benefit her mom. Her mother, a devoutly religious woman, had been diagnosed as having cancer and was given a year to live if she didn't undergo chemotherapy. She declined, however, placing her trust entirely in God's care. She's still with us four years later, and her confidence in God has been vindicated.
Such conversations on spiritual healing are not unusual nowadays. They verify, on a personal level, statistics which indicate that more people are embracing nontraditional modes of healing. A new awareness is dawning about what to value in health care. As a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association states, "Users of alternative health care... find in [alternative therapies] an acknowledgment of the importance of treating illness within a larger context of spirituality and life meaning." John A. Astin, "Why Patients Use Alternative Medicine," Journal of the American Medical Association 279, no. 19 (1998), pp. 1548-53 .
