My father is a physician and I have a great respect for the medical profession.  After years of visiting people in the hospital, sitting with families waiting for a surgery to be finished, and even going to doctor appointments with elderly members of my congregation, I understand why it is called “the practice of medicine.”  The doctors are trying things, using their best guess, hoping that it works.

Often the doctors, nurses, and nurse practitioners get it right.  Often enough that we expect them to get it right on the first try every time.  But then there are the times when they just don’t know, so they try one thing, and if it doesn’t work, they try another.  Today I talked to three parishioners, with completely different circumstances, who have been frustrated by medical problems that the doctors can’t seem to figure out.  The patients don’t want more tests.  They don’t want the best guess.  They want to get well and go home.  They are sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Akron is blessed with wonderful hospitals and plenty of dedicated and caring medical health professionals.  I know they want these folks to be healthy almost as much as the folks do themselves.  But the body is a puzzle – and the doctors are doing their best to figure it out.

So when our doctors are practicing on us, we have to put ourselves in the hands of the Great Physician.  He is the only one who really knows what is going on – the only one who doesn’t have to practice in order to heal.  We have to be steeped in prayer.  And we have to be patient patients and repeat our medical histories over and over until the doctors are done practicing and get it right.