His question came with tears and desperation. He was a college student and he addressed about thirty of his fellow college students, crowded into the waiting area of a hospital.  “I have a question for everybody here!  How many of you believe he can really be healed? I mean, how many of you really trust God to heal him?  All of you?  OK. Well, I think that’s the way we should be praying!  No more of this, ‘God, we ask for your will to be done.'”

He was referring to Nathan. I had first met Nathan 4 years prior at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Nathan was dwarfed and unable to walk from birth. I met him when he came by our outdoor Christian book table on an electric powered wheel chair. Nathan was not a believer in Jesus Christ at the time.  He attended our meetings and Bible Studies for a whole year before making such a commitment.  His delayed decision was more than understandable. Christianity talks about the hope of a bodily resurrection. If the Bible was true, Nathan not only knew he would walk someday and be full sized someday, he also knew that he would be in this new immortal state  forever and ever. He was not about to embrace such a hope, only to later on have this hope dashed.

In time, Nathan not only became a Christian, he became one of our small group leaders. The guy was friendly, witty and intelligent. His life story was a testimony to all who knew him.

But tonight, I was back in Santa Barbara, after having moved to San Diego. I was back and I was at the hospital because Nathan, my former student and dear friend, was dying. He had developed pneumonia and his weakened, frail chest was not offering a whole lot of help. His parents were there with us. They had known since the day of Nathan’s birth that his life might be a short one but all the foreknowledge in the world cannot prepare a parent for the death of their son.

Now we were praying for healing. Not only were we praying, we had several reasons for believing it might actually happen! Meiko, one of the women in our college fellowship, also attended a church on Sunday mornings. She asked her pastor to pray for Nathan.  He did pray and during his prayers, God gave him a vision. He saw Jesus standing over Nathan’s bed healing him.

There was something else. Whenever it was my turn to come by Nathan’s bedside, he perked up with an energy and vitality that seemed to come out of nowhere. “Bob!” he shouted as loud as his weak voice could, “I want to live!  I want to live!”

“OK, ” I said. “Then let’s pray. And Nathan, God will heal you. Whether He makes you well or takes you to heaven to live with him, you are going to get better one way or the other.”

Of course, that part about how God might heal him in heaven was unsatisfactory to many of my “name it claim it” friends.  This very notion was a lack of faith in their eyes.

I did feel a kind of pressure I had never experienced before. Nathan certainly seemed to be looking to me, his spiritual mentor, to bring about healing but this was something I could not do. Only God could. And yet, between the vision from Meiko’s pastor and the way Nathan reacted to my prayers, it was clear that something was up. God was definitely working!

Nathan died that night. He died in his parent’s arms and I was in the room. Never before had I seen two parents hold their dead son and I hope I never have to see it again. “Oh, Nathan, they cried out,  “Nathan! Light of our life!”

The group was devastated and some were quick to blame themselves and each other for a lack of faith that had killed their friend. This is the legacy left from our “name it, claim it” preachers: They have achieved the impossible, pouring salt in the wound of a tragedy, they cause the grieving to also feel guilty.

But in the days that followed, we discovered several interesting things.  John, another member of our group who had not been at the hospital, was awakened in the middle of the night. He knew God had awakened him, so he memorized the exact time on the clock.  According to John, God was telling him that something had just happened.  Either Nathan had been healed or Nathan had just died.  It turned out to be the latter, but John knew God had awakened him to let the rest of us know He was still in control. When we compared clocks, we saw that John had indeed been awakened at the exact minute of Nathan’s death.

Meiko was the most confused.  She went back to her pastor to get clarification of this vision.

“What exactly did you see?” she asked him.

“Well, I saw Jesus standing over Nathan at his bedside.  Jesus stretched out Nathan’s legs and made him the normal size of a human being.”

Meiko was quite taken back. She had said nothing to her pastor about Nathan’s dwarfed condition. She had merely asked him to pray for a friend who was ill. How could he have known this, if the vision had not come from God?

“What next?” she asked.

“Then Jesus took the fully grown Nathan and carried him off in His arms. I just assumed Nathan had been healed. But it looks like God was instead giving me a vision of carrying Nathan off to heaven.”

Yes, God can heal and to this day, I wish he had healed Nathan. But that’s a selfish wish.  We all miss him. Nathan may not be too unhappy with his current status. What was Nathan’s destiny? How did God choose to answer our prayers for him? By standing over his bed, stretching out his legs, and gently carrying him off to eternity.

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