Healing

It is hard to mend a broken heart, but in a few years doctors might be able to do essentially that. Scientists are closing in on ways to help patients grow new heart muscle after a heart attack, as well as new lung tissue to treat fibrosis, corneas to erase eye pain, and other body parts to gain a new chance at life.

If the science works, it could represent a new approach to medicine: reversing rather than alleviating chronic illnesses. The idea “is really to restore function to the organ such that the quality of life of that person is normalized,” said one expert.

The need for regenerated hearts alone is huge. Up to 3% of the world’s population suffers from heart failure, in which a heart whose muscle has been damaged by a heart attack or another disease gradually loses its ability to pump blood. The condition affects about 6.5 million people in the U.S. and is the leading cause of hospitalization among Medicare patients.

In a story that moved even seasoned doctors to tears, a young girl named Pari inspired what her neurologist calls a “sort of miracle” after her father suffered a devastating stroke. Shared by Dr. Sudhir Kumar of Apollo Hospitals in India, the story has touched hearts around the world.

When her father was hospitalized, paralyzed and unable to speak, Pari arrived with a cracked, faded pink piggy bank—her most treasured possession—and offered its contents to the doctors. “I have saved a lot of coins in this,” she said, her voice steady despite her tears. “You can use all of them to make Papa speak again.”

Moved by her love, the medical team enrolled her father in an intensive rehabilitation program that included Melodic Intonation Therapy (MIT), which uses music and melody to help restore language. Slowly, with the help of Kishore Kumar’s classic Hindi songs—favorites he once sang with his daughter—faint hums gave way to broken words.

Each day, Pari visited the hospital, sitting by his side, reminding him of their cherished game of antakshari, a common Indian parlor game where people sing with and to one another. One song in particular became their bridge through the silence: “Rona kabhi nahi rona, chahe toot jaye khilona” (“Never cry, even if your toy breaks”). Though he couldn’t yet converse, his hums were filled with affection and hope.

Then, three months later, the miracle arrived. Pari walked into the outpatient department—this time with her father beside her. He stood tall, smiling. And then, with clear words and joy in his voice, he said, “Pari, let’s play antakshari.”

It was a moment no one in the room would forget. A father reclaimed from silence. A daughter’s love, translated into healing. For these two, in this moment, their love was the most effective treatment.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God can use the smallest acts of love and faith to bring about mighty healing and restoration.

Have you ever wondered what happens in your brain while you sleep? A good night's sleep does more than just help you feel rested; it might literally clear your mind.

A study published in the journal Cell shows how deep sleep may wash away waste buildup in the brain during waking hours, an essential process for maintaining brain health. According to one researcher, “It’s like turning on the dishwasher before you go to bed and waking up with a clean brain.”

Research sheds light on how deep sleep plays a crucial role in “cleaning” the brain by flushing out waste products that accumulate during waking hours. This process, known as glymphatic clearance, is driven by the brain’s glymphatic system to remove toxic proteins associated with neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

The study identified norepinephrine, a molecule released during deep sleep, as a key player in this process. Researchers observed in mice that norepinephrine waves occur roughly every 50 seconds, causing blood vessels to contract and create rhythmic pulsations. These pulsations act as a pump, propelling brain fluid to wash away waste.

These findings, which likely apply to humans, highlight the importance of high-quality, natural sleep for maintaining cognitive health. Poor sleep may disrupt waste clearance, potentially increasing the risk of neurological disorders. Researchers noted that understanding these mechanisms can help people make informed decisions about their sleep and overall brain health.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sleep is a precious gift from God, reminding us of the importance of rest in our lives. By modeling rest himself, God teaches us that taking time to recharge is necessary. Renewing our minds is crucial, and rest allows us to do just that—refreshing our thoughts and rejuvenating our spirit.

In an article in Scientific American titled, "Rx for Teen Mental Health: Volunteering," Lydia Denworth writes that "helping others might help depression and anxiety." She gives three examples:

● An early experiment found that 10th graders who volunteered in an elementary school for two months showed fewer signs of harmful inflammation and lower levels of obesity compared to students who didn’t volunteer.

● A group of 14- to 20-year-olds who had been recently diagnosed with mild to moderate depression or anxiety participated in volunteer work at animal shelters, food banks, and other community organizations. They experienced a 19% reduction in depressive symptoms.

● A 2023 analysis revealed that young people who participated in community service or volunteered in the past year were more likely to be in very good or excellent health. They also tended to stay calm and in control when faced with challenges and were less likely to experience anxiety. Why? Helping others improves mood and raises self-esteem. It provides fertile ground for building social connections. It also shifts people’s focus away from negative things and can change how they see themselves.

Rabbi Sharon Brous writes about an ancient Jewish practice from Second Temple Judaism:

Several times each year, hundreds of thousands of Jews would ascend to Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and political life. They would climb the steps of the Temple Mount and enter its enormous plaza, turning to the right en masse, circling counterclockwise.

Meanwhile, the brokenhearted, the mourners (and here I would also include the lonely and the sick), would make this same ritual walk but they would turn to the left and circle in the opposite direction: every step against the current.

And each person who encountered someone in pain would look into that person’s eyes and inquire: “What happened to you? Why does your heart ache?”

“Because I am a mourner,” a person might say. “My father died,” another person might say. “There are so many things I never got to say to him.” Or perhaps: “My partner left. I was completely blindsided.”

Those who walked from the right would offer a blessing: “May the Holy One comfort you,” they would say. “You are not alone.” And then they would continue to walk until the next person approached.

This timeless wisdom speaks to what it means to be human in a world of pain. This year, you walk the path of the anguished. Perhaps next year, it will be me. I hold your broken heart knowing that one day you will hold mine.

Editor’s Note: You can read the original from Mishnah Middot 2.2 here.

In a New York Times editorial, David French notes the frequent conversations he has with parents of teenagers about the teen mental health crisis in America. French writes, “As a parent of a teenager, I see this world every day.” But then he raises the following questions about this crisis: “What if the call [to anxiety and depression and rage] is also coming from inside the house? What if parents are inadvertently contributing to their own kids’ pain?”

French writes:

When we think about children and screens, let’s also consider the relationship between adults and their TVs and smartphones. Watch [the news] and you’ll see a discourse dominated by fear and anger. If you spend any time at all on political Twitter [or Facebook], you’ll quickly see a level of vicious, personal attacks that differ little from the most extreme personal bullying a person can experience in middle school or high school.

What should we do about it? French concludes:

It might be worth asking a simple question: How much fear and anxiety should we import into our lives and homes? Forget teens, for the moment. Are we proving any more capable of handling the information age? It’s a question I honestly ask myself … I know that my anxiety can radiate outward to affect my kids …. If we want to heal our children [we] may well start by seeking the help we need to heal ourselves.

Community leaders in the Kansas City area have been breathing sighs of relief after the news that Ralph Yarl is expected to make a full recovery.

Sixteen-year-old Yarl was shot in the face after ringing the doorbell of the wrong home in an attempt to pick up his younger siblings. His plight went viral on social media, sparking outrage because local police initially declined to charge the shooter, 84-year-old Andrew Lester. After a series of local protests and national media coverage, Lester was charged in connection with the shooting, which prosecutors believe involved a “racial element” because Lester is white and Yarl is black.

Still, many were in high spirits after a photo began circulating of Yarl seated next to attorney Lee Merritt on an outdoor patio, smiling in the sun. Despite being in recovery from a traumatic brain injury, Yarl was referred to as “a walking miracle with a head of steel.”

Yarl’s mother said her son had a bullet in the left frontal lobe in his brain until it was removed by a team of surgeons. She said, “Had the bullet hit his head a fraction of an inch in any other direction he would probably be dead right now.”

Yarl’s aunt also provided an update: “Ralph is currently at home with his family. He can ambulate and communicate. A true miracle considering what he survived.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in the face of overwhelming wrongdoing and injustice, God can heal, renew, and restore.

While working in India, Doctor Paul Brand, who pioneered the modern treatment of leprosy, once laid his hand on a patient's shoulder. Then, through a translator, Brand informed the man about the treatment that lay ahead. To his surprise, the man began to shake with muffled sobs.

Doctor Brand asked his translator, “Have I done something wrong?” The translator quizzed the patient and reported, “No, doctor. He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder. Until you came here, no one had touched him for many years.”

Undercover narcotics officer Norm Wielsch was parked on a dark frontage road in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was about 9 p.m., and he was writing a suicide letter to his wife. Then he pulled out his gun as the most effective way to ensure a quick and painless death. Norm thought, I have investigated dozens of suicides. How had my life spiraled out of control to the point of wanting to commit it myself?

Norm had grown up in a middle-class family. One night, he went on a police ride-along. He loved it and knew he had found his calling. Norm writes,

Police protect the thin line between good and evil. They witness the worst that Satan has to offer. Few can endure the emotional stress and physical wear and tear, and after 10 years, PTSD had taken hold of me. Outwardly I appeared to have it all: marriage to my high-school sweetheart, two beautiful daughters, a great job, and a nice house. But inside I was a mess. My wife could take it no longer, and we divorced.

In 1998, I moved to a state police narcotics unit to work as an undercover agent. Soon after, I was diagnosed with a neurological disease called peripheral neuropathy, which was complicated by a degenerative muscular condition. After each of the 30 surgeries, doctors prescribed opioid pain medications. Before long, it was dozens a day and my physical and emotional condition was deteriorating. My second wife begged me to seek professional help, but I was too prideful.

In 2010, his daughter was diagnosed with liver tumors. Doctors gave her a 50 percent chance of surviving. This put Norm in a downward spiral of depression and so on that night he resolved to end his life. Norm writes, “Thankfully, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Even so, the next few months were a nightmare.”

Then he made a destructive decision. A private investigator he’d illegally helped in the past by checking license plates and warrant details, needed money for bills. He asked if Norm could supply drugs seized during narcotics investigations. At first, Norm declined, but the PI threatened to reveal their illegal collaborations. So, Norm gave in, not knowing that federal investigators had already sniffed out the scheme. He was arrested the next day and bailed out a few days later.

This was my darkest hour. But God began his mighty work in my life one evening when the telephone rang. It was Pastor Jeff Kenney in Concord, California. I did not know Pastor Jeff, and I did not believe in God. Even so, he invited me to church but I declined. But my wife suggested that God was missing from our lives. She insisted we go to church the next Sunday and so we did.

During one Sunday sermon, Pastor Jeff asked the congregation to pray for my daughter’s healing. Shortly thereafter, we went to get the results from her latest biopsy. The doctor presented two scans: one showing the tumors, and another on which they had disappeared completely. He could not explain the results. It hit me like a ton of bricks. This was no coincidence—God had healed her! I finally believed there was a living God!

After pleading guilty to my charges, I was sentenced to 14 years in prison. There, I got a job in the chapel and earned a master’s degrees in theology and counseling. As I serve the remainder of my sentence, I’m working as an addiction counselor in a men’s residential facility, where I provide pastoral care as a credentialed chaplain. All the hardship, guilt, and pain changed me from the inside out. God may not heal my body in this life, but I know that I am healed—body and soul—for all eternity.

Dr. Eric McLaughlin is a missionary doctor in Burundi, one of the poorest nations on the planet. After years of watching one out of seven of his patients die, it is hard for him to hold onto hope. He tells the story of Odette, a young woman who was hospitalized with terrible kidney failure. Odette’s family pooled their money to send her to a kidney specialist in the city. Long-term dialysis was not an option, so Dr. McLaughlin wondered if the expense of such a trip would change anything for her.

Dr. McLaughlin writes, “I fear to hope sometimes. My recent weeks had been filled with tragedies like Odette’s. More than that, there had been several times when it seemed like someone was going to recover but then suddenly died. ‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick,’ says Proverbs 13:12. Exactly; my heart was sick.”

Amid his lament and doubt, his phone chimed. Dr. McLaughlin saw that the messages were from a friend named Onesphore, a former student and coworker. Now he works at a hospital in the city.

“Good morning doctor. I wanted to let you know that we have been caring for Odette. We have not been able to do much. But some fluids and careful observation have resulted in her kidneys returning almost to normal! We’re sending her home today. I just thought you would want to know. Praise God!”

Not only was Odette healed, but I heard the news from someone I had helped train for his current job. The good news arrived precisely when I was sitting there thinking about how afraid I was to hope. The idea that God was present was no longer theoretical; it was real and sudden. In a moment, the revealing of this whole story filled me with tearful joy, not a small amount of fear, and a renewed hope.

Snake oil was a real product. It was a traditional Chinese medicine that was brought to the United States in the 1800s by thousands of Chinese migrants who came to the country in order to find work building the Transcontinental Railroad. They brought with them their families, their culture, and their medicines. One of these was snake oil, extracted from Chinese water snakes, and used to treat arthritis and joint pain.

As word of the healing powers of Chinese snake oil grew, many Americans wondered how they could make their own snake oil here in the United States. Because there were no Chinese water snakes in the American West, many healers began using rattlesnakes to make their own versions of snake oil.

It was Clark Stanley, the self-styled “Rattlesnake King,” who successfully capitalized upon this. Stanley traveled across the United States, dressed as a cowboy, and put on shows. In front of a crowd, he would slice open a live rattlesnake and throw it into boiling water, and when the fats of the reptile rose to the surface, he would skim the top and bottle up the oil. Throngs of people lined up at his shows to buy the stuff.

Stanley claimed that he learned about the healing power of rattlesnake oil from Hopi medicine men. In 1893 he and his rattlesnakes gained attention at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Later he went on to establish production facilities in Beverly, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island.

However, there was a problem with Stanley’s product: Stanley's Snake Oil didn't contain any snake oil at all. In 1917, federal investigators seized a shipment of Stanley's Snake Oil and found that it contained primarily mineral oil, fatty oil believed to be from beef, chili peppers, turpentine, and camphor. Stanley was charged for fraudulent marketing and fined $20.

Ever since then, the term “snake oil” has been established in popular culture as a reference to any worthless concoction sold as medicine, and has been extended to describe a wide-ranging degree of fraudulent goods, services, ideas, and activities such as worthless rhetoric in politics.

As recently as five years ago, author and speaker Doreen Virtue was the world’s top-selling New Age author. She enjoyed a phenomenally lucrative lifestyle, living on a 50-acre ranch in Hawaii. Her publisher treated her like a rock star, flying her and her husband first class to give sold-out workshops across the globe. She rubbed elbows with celebrities.

Virtue described her life and teaching this way:

New Agers often view Christianity as having dogmatic rules, but they have their own rigid standards about what an “enlightened person” must and mustn’t do. During my 20 years as a New Age teacher, I promoted techniques like “positive affirmations,” believing and teaching that “your words create your reality.” We held up our wealth and fame as evidence that our principles were true and effective. Yet despite this worldly success, we were unrepentant sinners with lives marred by divorces and addictions. Having sold-out workshops, standing ovations, adoring fans, and celebrity friends gave us swollen egos. I remember believing my every thought was a message or a sign from God or his angels.

In January 2015, she was driving along a Hawaiian road while listening to the Scottish-born pastor Alistair Begg. It was a sermon called “Itching Ears” taken from 2 Timothy 4, where the Apostle Paul writes that in the end times, people will want their itching ears tickled by false teachers who offer false hope (v. 3).

I could tell he was describing people just like me. God used Begg’s sermon to convict me for the first time in my life. His words pierced my stony heart, and I felt ashamed of my false teachings. Then when I read Deuteronomy 18:10–12, I encountered a list of sinful activities that included several I was practicing, such as divination, interpreting signs and omens, and mediumship. I was broken, deeply shamed, and humbled. I dropped to my knees in shame and sorrow. “I’m so sorry, God!” I kept wailing in repentance. “I didn’t know!” On that very day I gave my life to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The decision had far-reaching consequences. Doreen and her husband left their fancy Hawaii home. Her New Age publisher ended their professional partnership. New Agers treated her as an object of scorn.

Having to admit that I was wrong to the entire world—my books were published in 38 languages—has been deeply humbling. Even so, I needed that humility to better learn how to lean upon God. After seeking but never finding peace in New Age, I have finally found it in Christ.

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks visited John Hopkins Hospital complaining of bleeding. Doctors discovered a large, malignant tumor on her cervix. Lacks began undergoing radium treatment for cervical cancer and later underwent a biopsy to determine the progress of the treatment. Doctors were shocked to find that Lacks’ cells were unlike any others they had ever seen. Whereas other cells that they used for research would die, Lacks’ cells doubled every 20-24 hours.

Today, these cells, nicknamed “HeLa” cells, are replicated worldwide and have been used to study the human genome; the effects of toxins, drugs, hormones, and viruses on the growth of cancer cells; and played a crucial role in the development of polio and COVID-19 vaccines. Lacks’ cells were the first immortalized human cell line and one of the most important cells in medical research.

Henrietta Lacks died more than seventy years ago at the age of thirty-one. History would have long since forgotten her if not for that special something drawn from her blood. Today, scores of polio survivors and the billions who've been vaccinated for COVID-19 owe a great debt to this woman of whom most people have never heard. Only as her story is retold each February as part of Black History Month is she remembered.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus' story bears many similarities to Henrietta's. He, too, died around the age of thirty. He, too, might have long since been forgotten if his story wasn't regularly retold and at Easter especially. Like Lacks, Jesus is honored for that special something about his blood. As Isaiah puts it, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."