Let us pray: Gracious and eternal God, today we come to you seeking to deepen our understanding of the ways in which you are present and working in our lives to heal us of our afflictions. May we in these moments receive the gift of wisdom. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.

You may be familiar with the life story of Thomas Dooley, the Christian military doctor who devoted his life to serving sick and dying people living in Vietnam and Laos in the 1950s. When he died of cancer in 1961, the world considered his death a tragedy, which indeed it was.

One of Tom Dooley's books is titled The Night They Burned the Mountain. The setting is the Asian country of Laos in the hot, dry season preceding the wet and rainy monsoons. It was a period of intense fighting between the Communist and Laotian gover…