“Speak just one word, then my servant will be healed.” (Matthew 8:8)

The art of having a long illness and of slowly healing is one of the most difficult challenges in life.  Especially the first, having a long illness, is one of the arts of life.  For you have to become “patient.”  That word means having patience, not only with the illness, but also with yourself.  Every form of unrest and impatience disturbs the healing process.

You have to be ill and full of trust in such a way that the healer can do his work.  Sometimes that is the physician who has the right means and insight into character.  Sometimes it is also, or especially, the self-healing capacity of the patient.

But in all cases it is the Savior who ultimately heals.  That is why He says: “… for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) If there is anything that being ill and healing patiently bring about, it is trust in the visible and invisible helpers on the way to recovery.  For just as puzzling and unpredictable as the cause and the process of an illness can be, is the healing that takes place sooner or later—even if it is through death, which ultimately makes us healthy.  That is why the first Christians called the death day dies natalis, which means birthday.  To the spiritual world we are born when we die.

As no other, the Roman officer has unconditional confidence in the healer for the recovery of his servant: “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter my house.  Speak just one word, then my servant will be healed.”  In religious terms, that is called faith.

Christ, the Savior, wants to heal us—even from the illness all of us are afflicted with all our life: the sickness of sin.  In illness, weakness, exhaustion, and in death He wants to bear the burden together with us, if we entrust ourselves to Him.  “For he has taken up our ailments and has born our diseases.”

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, February 1, 2026