Let the little children come to me...

Dead.

I prayed for her: healing, blessing, energy, life. I layed my hands on her and prayed for her the way Jesus said I should. I prayed in His name. I prayed in faith.

And now she is dead.

I held her hand, and now that hand is stiff and cold. I looked into her eyes- her beautiful, young brown  eyes and now those eyes are glazed over, staring off at something I cannot see. I prayed for her and she was alive- sick and lethargic, yes- but alive. And not one hour later, a group of women ran down the hall to get me, to tell me that she was dead.

They led me to the hospitable bed where she lay- a tiny body amply covered by a small bedsheet.  I looked at the small lump that I knew to be her body , trying to make my brain understand the cold, harsh truth. My mind was numb as I found myself peeling back the grey sheet. I knew in my head what I would find, but nothing could have prepared me for the shock it was to look upon the  body of a child that one hour ago was full of life and now was just an empty shell. Nothing could have prepared me for the wave of nausea that came over me as those brown eyes stared up at me, half-blinking, lifeless and reality finally hit me.  Dead. This little girl was dead. The last time I looked at her, she was alive. And now she is dead.

Her mother and her sister’s wails broke through the shocked silence and brought me out of my daze. I scooped up the sobbing little girl- too young to even understand why she was crying- and held her close. I put my arms around the young mother and the grief sunk in.

This mother’s child was dead. I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. I couldn’t even think. I just sat there holding the child on my knee and patting the mother’s back. A small crowd had gathered at the doorway to see what I would do. I was the missionary, God’s annointed white person- perhaps I ought to try and raise her from the dead? Hah. Please. I couldn’t even pray for her to be healed from something as simple and cureable as Anemia. I was the last person in the world who could raise someone from the dead.

I didn’t know what to do, what to say. Surely, I must do something. They were all expecting me to do something! As soon as the child died, they had run to get me. But all I could do was sit there and sob. I was supposed to be the missionary, God’s servant of great faith. But in that moment, I had no faith at all. I didn’t know what to pray. I didn’t think I could pray. But my heart cried out without words to a God I couldn’t speak to. And I heard in my soul, the words of Jesus: “Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven”.

In my last post, I wrote about how God reveals the Kingdom of Heaven to us through the beauty of nature and the witness of other spirit-filled believers, even in the darkest of circumstances, in the strangest of ways. I knew then that with whatever faith I could muster, I had to believe that this too was a revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven: Jesus bringing a little child to Himself. I had to somehow believe that he had been merciful enough to take her out of this cruel  and fallen world and was right now holding her on His lap, showing her true love and joy for the first time.

I had prayed for her to be filled with life and energy and now she is. Now she has life in abundance, a life where she will never again feel the pang of hunger, where she will never know sorrow or guilt or loneliness. True life being lived the way God planned it to be lived.

Despite the peace that comes from this, there is no denying that my faith has been rocked. I don’t understand how this 2 year-old girl’s death is glorifying God, how this girl’s death is bringing those around her a deeper revelation  of God’s love, how this girl’s death is bringing heaven on Earth. I don’t understand why, if I have all the authority that Jesus had, she died instead of being healed. Jesus said that I can ask anything in His name and it will be mine. How can that possibly prove to be true in light of what happened today? I don’t understand how God was more glorified through her death than He would have been through her healing. He could have healed her, He could have spared her family so much grief, He could have spared me all this doubt and anguish. But He didn’t. I’m not certain where to go from here. How can I be expected to pray for another sick person in faith believing that they will be well? I prayed for this little girl. And now she is dead.

I am doubting. How can I not doubt? I refuse to sweep this under the rug, and polish it over with the pretty excuse that God’s ways are higher than ours. My heart it a little bit broken, I am still wiping tears from my eyes.  I deserve to question, I deserve to wrestle with this. And I know that ultimately, it is good for me to doubt. Because, ironically enough, this is the only way my faith can grow.