For the healing of the nations.

“I find the source of all my strength in my God— who says: “Is it too small a thing for you, my servant, to restore greatness to Jacob’s tribes and the survivors of Israel? I will make you to be a light to the nations and to bring the light of my salvation to the ends of the earth!””

Isaiah 49:5b-6 TPT

“In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”

Revelation 22:2 NKJV

In my short time as a physician, I have found many peculiar things, one being this: there is a clear distinction between a physician and a healer.

In theory, one could chafe at this distinction. Don’t people with broken bodies come to us for our advice and treatment? Don’t our medications extend people’s lives and heal people’s symptoms? Doesn’t our research lead to remedies that put people’s bodies and minds back together and allow them to function more optimally? Is that not what healing is?

And yet…though we have discovered so much and done so much for people, there remains a large gap between the profession of medicine and the power of healing.

The daily pill prescribed by the family medicine physician can keep the patient’s blood pressure at an acceptable level, as long as the patient remembers to take it every day. God forbid that the patient’s insurance, mental health state, problems with their job, or simple forgetfulness ever get in the way of them taking this pill— then they’ll end up right back where they started from. 

The surgeon’s methods in contrast can be immediately curative—stopping the bleeding, putting the dislocated bone back in its place, removing the tumor. But it comes at the price of excruciating pain. Done wrong, it can cause permanent disability. And too many surgeries for the same condition can lead to more harm than good in the end.

We don’t cure, we manage. We see a snippet of our patients’ lives and we try to manage their condition based on what’s presented to us. Sometimes, that totally works! Other times, we end up entirely missing the point. 

Many times, the recommendations that we doctors give our patients for living healthy lives seem scarcely applicable for them or for us. How many of us residents end up neglecting our own health — eating whatever junk food the hospital cafeteria serves, forgetting exercise for months or even years, barely sleeping at all, ignoring our mental health struggles — just so that we can make it through?

In this profession of medicine, is there room for true healing?

One of the many names that God calls Himself in the Bible is “the LORD who heals you” (Exodus 15:26). The word for “heal” in this verse is “raphah”, which means to mend, to put back together, and to restore to wholeness. It is also used to refer to the work of a physician, but it is understood that the process of raphah— of taking the broken things and not only putting them back together but making them truly whole again— can only truly be done by God. 

God, who takes everything we’ve done and will do wrong and removes it as far as the east from the west; who is our continual refuge in times of trouble, regardless of where the trouble comes from or what kind it is; who enables us to forgive; who takes hearts of stone and reforms them into hearts of flesh, full of compassion and love; who takes people from the poor and lowly place, and establishes them in high places; who cares about every detail of our lives, even the ones we don’t know. He is the one true Healer, and the Great Physician.

We as physicians have the privilege of participating in the Lord’s great work of healing. Martin Luther once referred to physicians as “the cobblers of our Lord God”. The truth is that we do heal bodies. We prevent strokes and heart attacks, and we save people’s lives from heart attacks when they do come. We fight cancer with swords, scalpels and chemotherapy. We help people gain control of their anxious minds and lift them out of depressive episodes. We give people more time on this earth to spend doing the things that they are free to do. We play a big part in healing. 

But we are certainly not the end-all and be-all of healing. There is so much more about the human body and mind that we have yet to figure out. And allopathic medicine knows almost nothing about the human spirit. These are fledgling areas of research, which like every other thing we’ve researched, will only grow. And if they are allowed to grow, the full grown result will bring even more healing.

But the true hands of healing will always and forever belong to God. 

And as Christian physicians, we have the gift of not only using our profession to heal, but of bringing our patients — and each other — closer every day to the true Healer, Jesus Christ. 

We are the hands and feet of Jesus whenever we establish a good relationship with a patient, enabling them to trust us with their care. We are the hands and feet of Jesus whenever we work hard to refine our skills so that we can help as many patients — as many fellow humans— as possible. We are the hands and feet of Jesus whenever we treat each other — whether resident, attending, student, nurse, tech or cleaner — as image bearers of God, worthy of respect and love. We are the hands and feet of Jesus whenever we fight for justice, for the rights of all people to receive quality healthcare. In all of these things, we help bring more and more of God’s kingdom to earth.

At the end of time, as described in Revelation 22, there is a tree of life whose leaves are used for the healing — for the raphah — of all nations. And while we aren’t there yet, while God gives us breath, we can bring as much of that vision as possible to earth. We can be healers — carriers of God’s healing power — to our patients and to our world.

For the healing of the nations. Let’s do this!