For my daily prayer I use a "Lutheran breviary" called For All The Saints. This morning I found some sentences that I could have quoted in yesterday morning's sermon! (I entitled the sermon "God Desires Healing." It is posted on the website.) These sentences are from Alexander Schmemann, a great Eastern Orthodox theologian of the 20th century.

Read them prayerfully. Please ignore the sexist language!

"Here is a man suffering on his bed of pain, and the church comes to him to perform the sacrament of healing. For this man, as for every person and the whole world, suffering can be the defeat, the way of a complete surrender to darkness, despair and solitude. It can be dying in the very real sense of the word. And yet it can be also the ultimate victory of a person and of Life in that person. The church does not come to restore health in this man, simply to replace medicine when medicine has exhausted its own possibilities. The church comes to take this man into the Love, the Light and the Life of Christ. It comes not merely to 'comfort' him in his sufferings, not to 'help' him, but to make him a martyr, a witness to Christ in his very sufferings. A martyr is one who behods 'the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God' (Acts 7:56). A martyr is one for whom God is not another -- and the last -- chance to stop the awful pain; God is his very life, and thus everything in his life comes to God, ascends to the fullness of Love."

And then comes this prayer, from someone named Donald Houston Stewart:

Grant Thy healing power and presence, O Lord,
Upon all who sorrow, or are distressed in spirit and mind;
Upon all anxious, defeated, and troubled souls;
Upon those everywhere who seek forgiveness and restoration,
Who hunger for enlightenment and communion with Thee;
Upon us all, bestow again the authority of Thy Holy Spirit
and the Peace of Thy communion with us.

Begotten in Thy Light, deliver us from all darkness.
Lifted by the powerful tide of Thy creative purpose,
save us from all despair and loneliness.
Pour out upon us the Power of Thy healing purpose,
so that knowing ourselves created afresh by the dominion of Thy Love, our hearts may be in our time the cradle of Thy coming again in transforming power.
Through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee, world without end, Amen.