I’ve just had a week off with the family, and as often happens, conversations can take some truly unexpected turns. On one occasion, we somehow landed on the topic of illnesses and prayer.

Now, this got me thinking. And then it got me chuckling. Because it instantly brought to mind one of my favourite, slightly gross, wonderfully hilarious stories of divine intervention. It involves my daughter, Lily, a sore stomach, and a rather dramatic, shall we say, evacuation.

It was bedtime, a time usually reserved for the strategic deployment of ‘just one more story’ or ‘I’m thirsty’ tactics. On this particular evening, however, the complaints were genuine. “My stomach hurts, Daddy,” she moaned, clutching her tummy with a pained expression that would have won her an Oscar if Pixar ever did a film about appendicitis.

Being the ever-so-spiritual, yet sometimes-a-bit-sleepy, Christian dad that I am, I immediately thought, “Right, let’s go for the spiritual plaster.” I said, “Okay, Lils, let’s pray on this. We’ll ask Jesus to take away the pain so you can have a good night’s sleep.” I put my hand on her tummy and offered up a fervent, if slightly perfunctory, prayer. Something along the lines of, “Dear Jesus, Lily’s tummy hurts. Please make it better so she can sleep. Amen.”

Not Quite What I Prayed For

Now, I must confess something at this point. And please don’t judge me too harshly. As I prayed, my internal monologue was less ‘expecting a miracle’ and more ‘hoping this will placate her enough to drop off’. I was, in essence, using prayer as a sophisticated form of bedtime psychology. My faith, in that moment, was probably hovering somewhere around the level of ‘I hope the biscuit tin isn’t empty’.

So, you can imagine my utter, jaw-dropping surprise – nay, shock! – when my prayer reached its ‘Amen’. There was no gentle sigh of relief, no peaceful drifting off to sleep. Oh no. Instead, my daughter, Lily, executed what can only be described as a perfectly choreographed, projectile-vomiting dash. She shot out of bed like a startled gazelle, made a beeline for the bathroom, and, thankfully, hit the toilet with pinpoint accuracy.

The sounds that followed were… well, let’s just say they weren’t pretty. But then, after a few moments, she emerged. And here’s the kicker: the pain was gone. Completely. Not only that, but the anxiety of being sick, which usually plagues kids (and quite frankly, me), was entirely absent. She just shrugged, said, “I feel much better now,” and happily climbed back into bed, drifting off to sleep without another peep of discomfort or complaint. No more sickness, no lingering pain, just peaceful slumber.

I stood there, blinking, trying to process what had just happened. My half-hearted, slightly cynical prayer had resulted in an instant, albeit messy, healing. We still laugh about it to this day. It’s one of those moments that always reminds us that God works in mysterious ways – and sometimes, those ways involve a quick trip to the porcelain throne. It was effective, immediate, and certainly not what I had in mind when I asked Jesus to ‘take away the pain’. I guess sometimes the ‘taking away’ involves a bit of expulsion.

Jesus: The Master of the Unconventional Cure

This incident, as humorous as it is, really got me thinking about Jesus’s own healing methods. Because let’s be honest, if you were writing a divine instruction manual for healing, you probably wouldn’t start with ‘Step 1: Spit on the ground and make mud’. Yet, Jesus, the Son of God, the ultimate healer, had a penchant for the wonderfully, gloriously, and sometimes downright bizarre. He rarely went for the straightforward, clean, and clinical approach, often opting for methods that would make any modern-day health and safety inspector faint clean away.

Mud, Spit, and a Test of Faith (John 9:1-7)

Take, for example, the story where Jesus encounters a man blind from birth. What’s his solution? A gentle touch? A powerful word? Nope. He spits on the ground, makes mud with his saliva, and smears it on the man’s eyes. Then he tells him to go wash in the Pool of Siloam. Mud! On a blind man’s eyes! Can you imagine the disciples looking at each other, wide-eyed, thinking, “Is he sure about this?” But the man went, washed, and came back seeing. From mud and spit. It’s gloriously messy!

An Intimate, Physical Healing (Mark 7:31-35)

Then there’s the account where a deaf man with a speech impediment is brought to Jesus. He takes him aside from the crowd for a more intimate, focused moment. And then… he puts his fingers into the man’s ears, spits, and touches the man’s tongue. Ephphatha! – “Be opened!” he commands. And instantly, the man’s ears were opened, and his tongue was loosed. Fingers in ears, spit on the tongue. It’s not exactly what you’d find in a first-aid manual, is it? Yet, it worked perfectly.

Healing in Stages (Mark 8:22-26)

And what about the time a blind man is brought to him in Bethsaida? Jesus leads him out of the village, spits on the man’s eyes, and lays his hands on him. “Do you see anything?” he asks. The man says, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Not quite 20/20 vision yet. So, Jesus lays his hands on the man’s eyes again, and then the man sees clearly. A two-stage healing, involving spit, and a temporary vision of walking trees! It’s almost comical, yet profoundly effective.

A Practical Resurrection (Mark 5:35-43)

Even his more ‘standard’ healings often had a flair for the dramatic. Think of Jairus’s daughter, already dead. Everyone’s mourning, weeping loudly. Jesus walks in, calmly tells them she’s only sleeping, and then takes her hand and says, “Talitha koum!” – “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” And just like that, she’s back. Not a gradual recovery, but an instant resurrection. And his first instruction? “Give her something to eat.” Practicality amidst the miraculous!

Why the Eccentricity?

So, why all the unusual methods? Why didn’t Jesus just snap his fingers or simply speak a word from a distance every single time? He certainly had the power to do so; after all, he healed the centurion’s servant from afar with just a word (Matthew 8:5-13), and simply declared the paralytic’s sins forgiven before telling him to pick up his mat (Mark 2:1-12). So, the spit, the mud, the fingers in the ears – they weren’t necessary for the healing itself.

I think there are a few reasons, and they speak volumes about God’s character and our own faith journey:

• To Engage the Senses and Create a Memory: In a world without widespread literacy, physical actions were powerful teaching tools. Imagine being the blind man with mud on your eyes, or the deaf man feeling fingers in your ears. Far from being sterile, forgettable moments, these were deeply personal, multi-sensory encounters seared into the memories of the healed and the witnesses. The experience ensured they’d never forget how they were healed. Just like I won’t forget Lily’s projectile prayer.
• To Challenge Expectations and Invite Participation: Jesus used unconventional methods, like making mud from spit, to shatter people’s expectations of how God works. This approach also demanded active participation. He didn’t just perform a miracle on someone; he invited them into it. The blind man had to take a step of faith and go wash, making him an active participant in his own healing rather than a passive bystander.
• To Show His Sense of Humour: This might just be me, but I can’t help but feel there’s a divine twinkle in Jesus’s eye during these moments. Can you imagine the disciples’ faces when he first spat on the ground to make mud-paste? There’s a wonderful, joyful subversiveness to it all. Perhaps, alongside the profound theological lessons, Jesus simply enjoyed shaking things up a bit. He loved people, and maybe part of that love was expressed through a divine sense of humour, a desire to bring not just healing, but also a sense of wonder and maybe even a chuckle at the sheer unpredictability of God’s kingdom.

The God Who Breaks Our Boxes

So, what do we take from this? For me, Lily’s impromptu gastric exorcism, alongside Jesus’s wonderfully quirky healing methods, serves as a powerful reminder that God is far bigger, far more creative, and far less predictable than we often give Him credit for.

We tend to put God in a box, don’t we? Our expectation is for Him to work in ways that are neat, tidy, understandable, and preferably, not too messy. When praying for healing, we imagine a gentle warmth spreading through us or a gradual easing of symptoms. It rarely occurs to us that healing might come via a violent expulsion, a muddy smear, or a sudden, dramatic outburst.

But God, in His infinite wisdom and glorious sense of humour, often chooses the path less expected. Using the ordinary to do the extraordinary, He delights in turning our expectations upside down to show us His boundless power and love. God doesn’t operate according to our rules of etiquette or our carefully constructed theological frameworks. He just is, and He just heals, in whatever way He deems best.

So, the next time you pray for something, big or small, don’t limit God with your expectations. Be open to the unexpected. Be ready for the messy. Be prepared for the truly amazing. Because sometimes, the most profound answers to prayer come in the most surprising, and occasionally, stomach-churning, packages.