The Shepherd Sees the Miracle Before We Do

I have a photograph of my grandson taken when he was younger. In it he is on his feet, moving about the way any child his age would. There is no wheelchair in the picture and no braces, and nobody is lifting him. It has become one of the most precious photographs I own, and I look at it more often than I would care to admit.

He is a young teenager now, living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. His mobility is severely limited and he needs help with most of the ordinary things the rest of us do without thinking. As his grandparents, we find it very hard to watch. There is no gentler way to say that.

Yet when I look at that photograph I do not see the end of his story. I see a moment before the miracle. It shows me what he was once able to do, and I believe the day is coming when he will do those things again, and more besides. We have prayed over him for years. I do not count those prayers as unanswered. I count them as answered and not yet visible.

Why does God allow it?

Many people carry this question whether they say it out loud or not. Why do children live with conditions they did nothing to cause? Why do families have to watch someone they love lose strength a little at a time? I have asked it myself, usually late at night. These questions come out of real pain, and I will not pretend I have a tidy answer.

What I can tell you is what I do not believe. I do not believe God gave my grandson Duchenne. I do not believe He delights in suffering, or that He made a boy sick to teach his family a lesson. Sickness and disease belong to a fallen world. They are not gifts from our Father, and I will never tell my grandson otherwise.

When I want to know what God thinks about sickness, I look at Jesus. Peter said He "went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil" (Acts 10:38 NKJV). That is the clearest picture of the Father's heart we have been given. So I will not blame God for this condition, and I will not hide behind His sovereignty as a reason to quietly accept it.

We have also been down the generational curse track. We prayed into those things, dealt with what we believed needed dealing with, and broke those curses off him. We are not waiting to find out whether God is willing to heal. We believe He is. What we are waiting for is the day the healing we have believed for can be seen.

What the Bible says

Isaiah wrote about Jesus hundreds of years before He came.

"But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed."
Isaiah 53:5 NKJV

Peter took up the same truth and wrote it in the past tense: "by whose stripes you were healed" (1 Peter 2:24 NKJV). I am not going to water those words down because the answer has not yet walked into our living room. A diagnosis can tell you what Duchenne has done to a body. It has no say over what God will do with a life.

Lord, when?

This is where faith gets hard. We live by the calendar. We count birthdays and watch a boy grow taller while his legs grow weaker, and we ask the Lord when. I have asked it more times than I could count.

"But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."
2 Peter 3:8 NKJV

That verse is not an instruction to sit back and do nothing. It tells me God is standing somewhere I am not. I see one part of the story and He sees all of it. Where I see limitation, He already sees freedom. His timing is not the timetable I would have written, and I have had to settle in my heart that His is better.

Signs and wonders

When Jesus turned water into wine at Cana, John called it a sign.

"This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him."
John 2:11 NKJV

A sign points past itself to something bigger. The wine at Cana pointed to Jesus, and the disciples believed. In Acts 2:22 Peter speaks of the miracles, wonders and signs God did through Jesus. A miracle shows God's power. A wonder stops people in their tracks. A sign turns their eyes to the One who did it. I believe my grandson's healing will do all of that, and it will not happen quietly in a corner.

The people who have seen him

Think of everyone who has come into his life over the years. Carers, teachers, friends, doctors, other families living with the same diagnosis. They know exactly what Duchenne looks like because they have watched it in him. When God heals him they will not be hearing a story about a stranger. They will be looking at a young man they know, and they will remember what he was like before.

I wonder how many of them will start asking about God. I wonder how many will come to know Jesus and be spared standing before Him on the Day of Judgment without a Saviour. I cannot answer that, but the Shepherd can. He knows every person who has crossed my grandson's path and every person who will.

That includes you. You have read this far, and God knows why. He knows what you are carrying, perhaps someone you love who is unwell, perhaps a miracle of your own you have been waiting on for longer than you expected. Now you know my grandson's story, and in a small way you have become part of it. Pray for him if you would. And when you hear that he is up and running, I hope you will remember you read about it before it happened.

Run, Forrest, run

I can almost see it. There is that scene in Forrest Gump where Jenny shouts "Run, Forrest, run!" and the braces break off his legs as he goes. I have pictured my grandson like that more than once. I can see the people who have lifted him, taught him and treated him standing there saying, "I knew him before. Look at him now."

I do not believe God needs a boy to suffer so that others can be saved. But He can take a story marked by suffering and bring glory out of it. Duchenne is not good, and I will never call it good. Romans 8:28 does not ask me to.

"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."
Romans 8:28 NKJV

It says God works all things together for good. That is a long way from saying all things are good. I do not want Duchenne to be what defines my grandson. I want it to be the part of his testimony that came before the miracle.

Following the voice

Anyone who has worked sheep knows they do not see far. They see the next stretch of track and the tail of the one in front. They do not need to understand where the flock is headed. They need to know the shepherd's voice and follow it.

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me."
John 10:27 NKJV

That is where I am with my grandson. Psalm 23 takes the flock through green pastures and through the valley of the shadow of death, and the Shepherd is there in both. I do not believe God caused this valley. I do know He has been in it with us. I do not know the day or the hour, but I know the Shepherd, and I know He loves my grandson more than I ever could.

Faith has never meant pretending the condition is not real. It means refusing to accept that it is final. So I will keep believing for his healing and keep trusting God with the road between here and there. One day my grandson will get up and run, and when we look back over the whole of it we will see what was true all along.

The Shepherd saw the miracle before we did.

Everything I write, I have lived first.