“God, my back hurts. Never mind the cause. Never mind the lesson I should learn, something about lifting with my legs perhaps. At the moment I don’t care about anything more than relief. God, lift my pain. I know that this is a small pain compared to anyone suffering bone cancer, or a first degree burn, or any of a thousand chronic afflictions, or the pain of those coming through an unbearable loss of someone they love. In the big picture, this is not severe. Yet still, I ask for your healing.

I know that I have much to celebrate. I have much to thank you for, including general good health. I thank you for provision and the roof over my head and food on my table and a house full of basically happy kids. I have a good life, and you are the source. I know all this and I thank you.

Still, I can ask. I want to ask. I apply my faith in your goodness, that you care about such things as injuries that are not life threatening. I can still ask for help. I can still believe that you hear and care and respond.  As a father, I understand that even small things matter to my children. And so they matter to me. If this is true with me and my children, how much more when I turn to you, the true Father of fathers.

God, my back hurts. I have iced it and I have taken aspirin. I have rested it and stretched it. I have stood. I have lain still. Yet, I have pain.

You have invited me to ask for anything, in your name. You have asked me to believe and to bother you with petty matters. So, in your name, Jesus, I ask for healing. I ask for relief. I speak your words in your stead and say, as you once said, “Be healed.” And I wait now for my body to catch up with me faith. Yes, it is a small matter, in the small of my back. But the pain is real and therefore, it concerns you even more than it bothers me. I give it to you. You did not make my back for pain, and you take it to yourself as you take all pain, great and small upon the cross. In Jesus.”