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A prayer for those fighting for their health and their lives

Jim Morgan

I’m guessing no one around here knew Bob Tanner. He was my friend.

A couple of summers ago, after seven years of fighting cancer, he died.

Bob was an attorney, a very good attorney, in fact, and someone I counted on for wise counsel, not just as it related to business but in my personal life.



He told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. He was one of my heroes and his friendship meant a lot. I miss him.

In the last half year of his life, Bob knew he was dying and there was little he could do about it. He dealt with his approaching death in a straightforward manner.



In a note to a long list of people sent several months before he died, he wrote:

“While I certainly didn’t know how matters would play out, I made a point to visit each of you personally during the last year just in case matters went this way. Those visits felt good then and they feel even better now. Also, as I’ve told most of you years ago, I reached the conclusion that I wanted to make certain to be able to say that I had a nice time at the end of matters. Well, I’ve had a nice time and plan on continuing doing so for as long as I’m able.”

As Bob’s cancer progressed, Dr. John Todd, who was Bob’s personal physician, passed along a prayer. Bob described Dr. Todd as not just a good doctor but also a good friend and a good person.

Bob explained that Dr. Todd wrote the prayer after a long afternoon conversation between the two of them.

“I’ve prayed it aloud myself many times and doing so has been a wonderful experience,” Bob wrote when he sent me a copy of the prayer. He then asked if I were so inclined, would I pray it aloud on his behalf and then asked that I share it with others.

“I share the prayer with you because there are others who might want to have it so they might say it on behalf of someone else they know,” he wrote.

Bob is gone now, but others I know are fighting the same fight. One of my new friends in Frisco, who tells me she is a fan of my column, shared recently that two members of her family have been diagnosed with cancer.

I hope there are those who read the prayer and who will say this prayer for the family of my friend. And I hope there are others of you who will say this prayer for someone you know, someone who would appreciate your thinking of them.

While I’m not the most religious of people, I believe prayer can be as powerful a “therapy” as chemotherapy or radiation.

Here is Dr. Todd’s prayer:

“Almighty God, I am praying for my friends.

“I pray, Lord, that you will bless them, and love them, and guide them, and comfort them as they go through whatever travail you may have planned. Strengthen them and allow them to see your presence – your hand, your purpose and your intention – in all of this distress that you have allowed to befall them.

“Forgive them for whatever errors they may have committed, and for whatever ‘flaws’ you may have recorded in your ‘book’ concerning their actions and performance during their journey in this world, the journey that you assigned them.

“My hope is that you will cure them of this disease.

“Lord, I accept your sovereignty in all matters of human existence, both in this world and in the life to come. I know that with one word, ‘Heal,’ you have the power to remove illness. My prayer is that you will speak that word, and that you will cause this illness to disappear and to be gone from their bodies, forever.

“My prayer is that you will include them among those whom you love the most, those that you protect and favor, and I pray that you will allow them to know you are within them. We understand that you created each of us for your plan, and for your purpose, and for your pleasure.

“You caused them to come into this world for a reason. Let that reason continue.

“I do not pray that you swap my earthly and humanly requests for the divine plan and purpose you have for them. I do pray, however, that you will empower them to tolerate their illness and to see you, peacefully, in whatever you have in your design for them.

“Don’t leave them now, please. Allow them to become free of this illness so that they can complete their work on this world. Give them hope. Give them peace.

“Amen.”

Publisher Jim Morgan can be reached at (970) 668-3998, ext. 240, or jmorgan@summitdaily.com.


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