My first glimpse of the Kingdom was in my 5 year old daughter. My wife Amie wasn’t feeling well one Saturday afternoon, and Syd was wanting to play. Amie told her, that her stomach hurt and that she needed to r
est. Little Syd put her hands on Amies stomach and prayed a simple prayer of “Jesus help mom’s stomach not to hurt so she can play with me.” Literally seconds later, Amie told Syd – “my stomach doesn’t hurt any more, Jesus healed me!” Syd said, “i know mommy… let’s go play!”
A couple weeks later, I was working on some emails and Amie came walking through the room holding her head, I asked, “what’s wrong?” She said, “I’ve got a bad sinus headache.” I told her, “come here let me pray for you.” She said, “thanks, but I’m looking for Syd so she can pray for me.” A little offended and ego bruised I thought, “what the heck?”
We got new neighbors around this same time, she had 2 big cats – a well known vise of Sydney’s. They bathed their cats, and on one occasion got some soap in the cats eye. An infection set in and the eye soon turned white, being new to the area they didn’t know any local vets, so they went across the street to ask our other neighbor for a vet reference. They did give her a name of a good vet, but they also asked if she had met the Bokelman’s daughter Sydney. She said, “no, why’s that?” They told her, “when Sydney prays for people on the block they get better, and that she should have Syd pray for the cat.”
The neighbor loaded her cat up to and took it to the vet. Later that day, the new neighbor stopped by to introduce herself and to tell us this story. She said, ” I understand you have a daughter that prays for sick people and they get better, well – I have this cat that I really love that is going to loose his eye.” She explained that she had just gotten back from the vet, and that the infection had already caused the eye to become detached, and that it was only a matter of time that the eye would just shrivel up and leave an empty cavity in the cats eye socket. (This put a whole new spin on the neighborhood welcome wagon presentation.)
Amie said, that she would mention the cat to Syd during bed time prayers that night. That night almost as an after thought, Amie shared the prayer request to Syd. She said, “aawwweeee, what’s his name? Does his eye hurt?” After the medical interview, Syd prayed a very sweet, simple and compassioned filled prayer.
The next day, the neighbor came over to thank Sydney herself for praying. She said, “when I woke up in the morning, I remembered that I had asked for Syd to pray for my cat, so I went looking for him. I pulled him out from underneath the bed, and found that he had a new eye in the place of the dead one… God healed my cat.”
I remember struggling with the success that Syd had in praying for the sick. Why didn’t that happen when I prayed for people? I remember asking God that directly in a prayer, and some thoughts immediately came to mind…”Syd doesn’t know what God is incapable of doing yet.”
I immediately thought of all my doctrinal limitations and past experiences of praying for the sick that so eloquently, rationally, and sophisticatedly explained away all of the things God doesn’t do – or can’t do any more. I’d rather walk in the simple faith and power of my 5 year old, than lay hold to an arsenal of powerless Phd’s. God Help my unbelief… And give me the faith of a 5 year old.
