Monday Morning Manna: Praying Pastors Wives

When I was a teenager, my father was Pastor of a church in Houston, Texas and my mother was President of a city-wide Pastor Wives organization. On a cold-December night I lay in an Emergency Room with a broken second vertebra of the neck, hearing doctors saying it was a miracle I was alive, and not paralyzed. That’s when my mother sprang into action. On the social media of the day, my mother placed phone calls to several Pastor wives, who in turn called several others, and the prayer chain continued until a hundred or more wives had been contacted with a request on my behalf, to go “boldly to the throne of grace . . . and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). I spent the next nine months hearing doctors and surgeons explain why my neck bone would never heal, twice scheduled for surgery and twice cancelled at the last minute, unable to attend school or church services for nine months. After these nine months, I was pronounced healed. When my parents tried to thank the atheist orthopedic surgeon, he replied, “Thank someone else. I had nothing to do with the healing.” So my mother and her pastor wives friends did just that, they thanked Someone else. Six decades later, many of those ladies and most of the doctors who said I would never be totally well again have moved into eternity, and I’m still here. We sang a version of a little song originally written in 1929, and often adapted with different words, “Are there any rivers that seem to be uncrossable? Are there any mountains you cannot tunnel through? God specializes in things that seem impossible. He knows a thousand ways, to make a way for you. Let go and let God have His wonderful way. Let go and let God have His way. Your burdens will vanish, your night turn to day. Let go and let God have His way.” We did, and He did!

Dr. Dan Crawford, Senior Professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, is the WestCoast Baptist Association’s Spiritual Life & Leadership Mentor. Follow Dan on Twitter @DrDanRC and Facebook www.facebook.com/dan.crawford.