As I write this column, I’m between surgeries on my eyes. In fact, the glare from my computer screen is hurting my eyes right now.
I’ve had one cataract removed from my left eye. I am now waiting a couple of weeks for the operation on the other eye.
I want to personally thank Dr. Dana Taylor Waslowski and her husband, Dr. Ed Waslowski, my optometrists, who not only examined my eyes, but even invited me to spend the night at their home after my surgery. I also want to thank my surgeon, Dr. Ivan Garcia.
On a personal level, I want to thank Pete McGraw, who not only gave of his time to be with me at the rectory after the surgery, but undertook the challenge to clean up my apartment. I literally had amassed 40 years of clutter. It’s now all gone. True, Jesus could raise the dead to life, but Pete brought my apartment back to life.
I also want to thank Rose and so many others, who offered moral support over the phone through all of this time.
I share my story because we need to celebrate miracles. As we know from Scripture, Jesus gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and healing to people suffering from various diseases.
Today, we accept these healings as a part of life. We have surgeons and specialists who daily restore sight to the blind and heal various ailments. Mostly, we take such medical care for granted, but for most of human history, all of these treatments and surgeries would have been considered miraculous.
I suggest that we take some time in prayer to thank God for our various healing professions. I hope we will see them as expressions of God’s healing love and power. And to pray that they will see themselves as instruments of God, not just as medical professionals.
Before beginning surgery on my eyes, Dr. Garcia took some moments to pray. I’m not sure I ever heard a doctor pray before a procedure. I say this, not to embarrass him, but to offer it as a model.
Before I write a sermon or an article, I pray: “Lord, may my words be yours. May your words be mine.” If a sermon goes well, God gets the credit. If things don’t go quite as well, I know I wasn’t listening as well as I might.
Some of us remember an old commercial which said: “Things go better with Coke.” We might add that things always go better with God.
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