Prayer for Healing

A quick post... I am not in the habit of posting everyday, but I will make up for it today, I hope :-)

My wife and I lead a discussion with memebers of our church, the topic was special needs acceptance. I worked with the youth and Jen worked with the adults. As it worked out I finished a little early and headed over to the adult class to watch her in action :-) she was close to wrapping up when a good friend of ours asked an interesting question "With people with special needs, is it okay to pray for healing?" the conversation when deeper (you can read Jen post here). In a nut shell is praying for people with special needs, e.g. blindness, deafness, genetic disorders, etc. to be "cure" or "healed" okay?

I have several thoughts on this and I am sure there are others. 1. Pray what is on your heart. 2. when praying for someone else, asked them what they would like/need prayers for. 3. Somethings don't need to be "healed" or "cured"

I believe everything is created the way it is for a reason. or said another way, I believe God creates each of us in a unique way, for unique reasons, which we may or may not accomplish. I believe we often assume to be "healed" is to be made like me. I don't think that should be the definition, I think the definition should be to be healed is to be make like Jesus but since none of us can be Jesus then it would be to be like the person Jesus calls us to be, to live the life of the Kingdom of God. Jesus tell us in Mark 10:13-15 that unless we receive to the Kingdom of God like a child we will not recieve it.

So perhaps it would be more appropraite for us to pray that we were more LIKE people with DS, loving, accepting, caring, rather than that they were more like us.