Mom and Luke

Today is the Feast of St. Luke, who is remembered as a doctor and the author of the Gospel According to St. Luke and its accompanying book, the Acts of the Apostles.  

Given that Luke was a doctor, I am of course thinking of my mother and her need for continued healing following her head-on with the semi in June.  I asked for your prayers then; I ask for more now. She has just come through an emergency surgery on her gall bladder, which had gangrene; once again I am grateful to the excellent medical team at Parkview Medical Center in Fort Wayne, IN.  And I am giving thanks to God for seeing her through yet another challenge. 

Mom is back to not being able to sit up unsupported, but that ability will return in a few weeks, I expect, or even sooner. The brain injury continues to be a challenge, but is also slowly improving. We still hope to have her home before Thanksgiving.  Well.  She's never even seen "home," given that Dad found the place after her accident.  And I'm not there, so should I be saying "we"? Yes, I think so, since I am still one of those doing the hoping.  

I'd like to invite you all to join me not only in prayer for my mother (and father, who has a lot on his shoulders right now and his own health issues), but also in thanksgiving for all those in medical professions who give of themselves for the good of others.  There may be those in it only for the money, but medicine is truly a vocation for those called to the healing arts.  May God bless them richly and give them guidance, wisdom, and skill.

To Bart, Brian, Prem, Rebecca, Katie, Jennifer, Nan, Tim, Hilda, Thamar, Barbara, all my other medical friends, and my own doctors as well as Mom's, thank you for what you do.  

St. Luke, Evangelist and Physician

Almighty God, who inspired your servant Luke the physician to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of your Son: Graciously continue in your Church this love and power to heal, to the praise and glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Jesus healing the paralytic

Ecclesiasticus 38:1-4, 6-10, 12-14

Honor physicians for their services,

for the Lord created them;

for their gift of healing comes from the Most High,

and they are rewarded by the king.

The skill of physicians makes them distinguished,

and in the presence of the great they are admired.

The Lord created medicines out of the earth,

and the sensible will not despise them.

And he gave skill to human beings

that he might be glorified in his marvelous works.

By them the physician heals and takes away pain;

the pharmacist makes a mixture from them.

God's works will never be finished;

and from him health spreads over all the earth.

My child, when you are ill, do not delay,

but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you.

Give up your faults and direct your hands rightly,

and cleanse your heart from all sin.

Then give the physician his place, for the Lord created him;

do not let him leave you, for you need him.

There may come a time when recovery lies in the hands of physicians,

for they too pray to the Lord

that he grant them success in diagnosis

and in healing, for the sake of preserving life.


Prayer from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer
Reading from NRSV translation of the Bible (with Apocrypha)
Both via http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/HolyDays/Luke.html