The Great Physician

My choir did a study on a book called Too Small to Ignore: Why the Least of These Matters Most by Dr. Wess Stafford.

In case you are unaware, Dr. Stafford is the president of Compassion International, a group which supports children across the world, providing them with sponsors who help fund food, education, clothing... etc. The list goes on, but it is such an encouragement to be able to see the cool work that he is doing.

While I have been in Asia, I decided to read this book, as my work with children would be spotlighted through the trip. As I went through each of the chapters, not only was I confronted with a great deal of topics to personally think about, but lots of laughs, and even a few tears.

The following story is from one of the final chapters: it stole my heart and ran with it, such a beautiful story. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Needed: A Healing Prayer (Albania, Late 1980s)

But what about today? Does God still use children to accomplish His strategic goals in the current era? Absolutely.

During the Communist period in Albania, this little Balkan country was isolated from nearly everyone except its one ally, faraway North Korea. Travel was next to impossible. Radio and television broadcast signals from the Western world were jammed all across the country.

A little group of children in that dismal society was playing in an attic one day and found an old radio covered in dust and cobwebs. They somehow got it to work again, and lo and behold, it could pick up a Christian radio station! How this signal missed being jammed, nobody ever learned. THe kids began to gather secretly in the attic and listen, with the volume turned way down low, whenever an Albanian-language program would come on.

In the time the gospel message got through to them, affecting their fertile hearts with great power. One by one they prayed to accept Jesus as their Saviour and Lord. Now the secret programs became discipleship lessons as they learned to pray and slowly grew in their walk with Christ. This remained a strictly "No Adults Allowed" club, because the children knew their parents, in great fear of the authorities, would take away their precious radio and probably destroy it if they knew.

One day as they were listening to the speaker, they learned a new thing about God -- that he was the Great Physician. Jesus had healed the sick, the man said, and apparently could still do it today. Looking at one another, the kids said simply, "Well, we know where the sick people are. Let's go!"

This little band of courageous and compassionate children found their way down the city street and into the state-run Marxist hospital. They decided to start at the top floor, the third floor. Peeking inside the first room, they saw a very sick man. "Lord Jesus," they prayed in the hallway, "here's one. Please heal him."

They shuffled off to the second room and, discovering yet another sick person, repeated their childlike prayer: "Jesus, you can do this. Please heal her," they said quietly.

At the third doorway, their hearts were touched by the sight of a child about their age. "Oh, Jesus," they prayed, "please heal that little boy. He needs you very much."

As they worked their way down the hallway, door by door, a commotion began to build up behind them. Starting back at room one, patients were discovering that they had been healed and were getting out of bed in wonder. Oblivious to the distraction they were creating, the children continued their prayer trek down the hallway. Door by door they prayed, and miracles kept happening.

The bewildered nursing staff was too consumed with trying to get rejoicing people back into their beds to notice the little prayer band of children. They got to the end of the third floor and then disappeared. As the patients kept telling a common story of a little group of children in their doorways for a moment followed by healing, a search was launched for the kids. But they were nowhere to be found. 

Besa Shapalo, the wonderful Albanian child worker who told me about this, said she eventually got word of the miracles at the hospital, recognized the description of the children, and caught up with the little band.

"Do you know what was happening back there at the hospital?" She asked them with excitement and wonder in her voice.

"What?" replied the children.

"People were getting healed! God was answering your prayers. Many people were healed that day. Did you know that?"

The children looked at her with innocent eyes and said, "Yes, Jesus is the Great Doctor. He can do that."

"I know, I know," she replied, "but why didn't you keep going? Why didn't you pray on the second floor and then the first? You could have healed everyone in the hospital!"

Looking sheepish, they replied with the utter innocence that comes only from children. "Oh, we kinda got tired of doing that. We just wanted to do something else"! 

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That we might have the faith of children so that wild things can happen through Jesus: the Great Doctor, our best friend, the only one we need.