Heart and Soul: Praying for healing?

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Throughout his life as a theologian, Christian minister and cosmologist, Prof David Wilkinson has been asking - what does God do when I pray? The question became acutely personal after his wife, Alison, developed first ME and then crippling rheumatoid arthritis. As everyone prayed for her recovery, but no healing appeared to come for many years, the couple and their children felt their faith come into sharp focus. For their children, now both working for the Church, there was a profound crisis of faith which left them unable to pray. For David, anger and confusion that his wife, also a minister of a growing church, was left in pain and unable to walk, let alone lead her church. Naomi Wellings meets a family whose faith was shaken, but ultimately strengthened.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We've got 100 billion galaxies, each contain 100 billion stars.
0:09.5	I mean something like roughly the grains of sand on the beaches of the world.
0:15.9	As an astrophysicist, Professor David Wilkinson keeps this photo showing a sky peppered with stars on his study
0:22.6	wall. Just to remind me of the fastness of the universe, but perhaps more importantly for me as a
0:29.6	Christian, the extravagance of God.
0:31.7	As a committed event of our daily bread and forgive us our trespresses as we forgive those who trust.
0:40.4	As a committed evangelical Christian and theologian,
0:43.7	David believes observing space means observing God's creation,
0:48.7	celebrating the divine laws of physics.
0:51.9	But 12 years ago, any celebration felt hollow, as David's wife, Alison,
0:57.3	mum of their two children and minister to a growing congregation, first developed ME, and then
1:04.4	paralysing rheumatoid arthritis. So it was pretty grim, kind of getting across a room I could manage, but if I needed to go any further than that, it was a wheelchair and it was pretty grim, kind of getting across a room I could manage,
1:11.1	but if I needed to go any further than that, it was a wheelchair and it was a stick.
1:16.4	I think I was angry and praying for healing.
1:20.0	I could see the pain that she was in.
1:22.7	He and many others begged God for her healing.
1:26.2	If God was all powerful and God cared, then why wouldn't
1:30.6	he heal in the way he healed many in the Bible? You're listening to the documentary from the BBC
1:38.6	World Service. I'm Naomi Wellings and for this heart and soul, which explores personal approaches to faith and spirituality from around the world, I'm in the northeast of England.
1:50.5	To find out what answers David found to this question, what does God do when I pray?
1:57.5	From the sort of early days of marriage, we've always had a kind of open house and had lots of people around and wanted to do that.
2:04.8	That was one of the things that we lost when you were ill a little bit.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.