SAUCIER -- When I cry to you for help

First, my older sister was admitted with a severe intestinal virus. Pneumonia set in. The stress of the two caused her heart to go into AFib.

As all this was spiraling down, another sister reported that her oldest daughter was hospitalized. She went from not feeling well to the discovery of a mass in her abdomen and another next to her heart.

As dark updates followed the initial alerts, prayers were offered. My family is no more religious than the next, and members quench their spiritual thirst in different streams, but I have no doubt that all those intercessions were delivered as promised.

The prayers of my siblings were not the “thoughts and prayers” uttered so reflexively by public figures after some tragedy that you wonder if they ever took the time for either.

No, these were real prayers, with genuine bone-deep fear and anguish, grabbing for some strand of hope that would support both the sufferer and the supplicant.

In our tradition, prayer for healing first appears in Genesis when Abraham prayed that Abimelech and his family be cured of the illness that afflicted them.

But it must go back far beyond that, back to the dawn of human history. I have no doubt that, even before the first gods were named, knees were bent and eyes were raised to the heavens while begging that a loved one be spared. It’s our nature and our need.

It’s too soon to say if our prayers were answered. Things are going well now, but we don’t know if the storm has passed or if it’s the calm of the eye.

In this moment, I ponder my own prayer. I pray for healing, but I’m not sure what that means. I don’t believe that some divine hand will reach down and make my sister and my niece whole and healthy, and certainly not in response to my prayer.

There are those that do believe this. I don’t think they are wrong, as a matter of fact I envy them. It is just not where I am.

But I still pray and consider those prayers worthy. I pray that their pain be relieved, their bodies purged of all that threatens them, and that they be restored to the fullness of their lives.

I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know what God’s role in that is. But praying for them reminds me that God is present, and in that is the hope we all need.