“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…” (Psalm 139:13-14, NIV).

His blood disease was fairly stable; he was older but still working as a field dog judge. He shared with me, “I go to church every Sunday, and Wednesday nights. We always have something to eat when we get together. My son challenged me last week, ‘Do you go to church for the spiritual growth or for the food?”” He laughed, “I told him, ‘Both!’”

As God’s children and imitators of Christ, we are called to care for each other.

When asked whether that care is for physical needs or spiritual needs, the answer should be like that of my patient above, “Both!”

We are whole persons to God and should be whole persons to each other. As we care for each other, at any one time we may focus more on physical or spiritual needs, but neither should be left out of the encounter. As Mayo Clinic physician and missionary Dr. Mark Topazian writes in his book Healing, “The biblical concept of health is broad, incorporating not only normal bodily functioning but also robust energy, freedom, peace, security, and prosperity”

When I pray that my patient is healed of their cancer, I am focusing that prayer on their body, as I am when I prescribe the correct therapy. However, that body is fully incorporated into a person who has psychosocial and spiritual dimensions I should also care for as I seek to accomplish the good for them that God desires. And it’s not that I switch hats to move back and forth between the physical and the spiritual with anyone. The single hat of Christian caring always encompasses the whole person, with God’s Spirit prompting me toward which goal should be my focus with the time and energy of the moment.

Chief among those goals is that he or she comes to know and surrender their life to our Lord Jesus Christ, but it’s the whole person who surrenders and the whole person whom God created and loves.

Oswald Chambers said, “We have to recognize that we are one half mechanical and one half mysterious; to live in either domain and ignore the other is to be a fool or a fanatic.”

Dear Father,

Let me see and care for all of each person I meet.

Amen