I want to begin with a wonderful and mysterious story.

It begins badly. In September of 1995, when I was living in Nashville, I was diagnosed with chronic ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disorder with no known cure. The disease attacks your colon and can produce painful, dysentery-like symptoms, and they emerged right away.

By October I was in crisis. I’d lost more than 40 pounds, I couldn’t eat any solid food; every medical treatment was failing. I was hospitalized and met with a surgeon. Unable to ameliorate the symptoms, we started to consider surgery to remove my colon.

I was miserable. I was literally wasting away, in terrible pain. I was also a little frightened by the prospect of major surgery in my weakened state. I prayed, and I reached out to my friends and asked them to pray for me as well.

As the surgery date approached, I got a call from a dear friend, Ruth Okediji. Ruth was the leader of my law school Christian fellowship, and she’s now a professor at Harvard Law School. I’ll never forget her first words. “It’s over,” she said. “The Lord has healed you.”

My initial reaction was frustration. I was resigned to the surgery, and I wanted encouragement, not false hope. As a Christian, I believe that God is real and works miracles. But I didn’t consider that he would work a miracle on me. My prayers were of the conventional kind that I grew up with — prayers that doctors would have wisdom and that I’d have the courage to face the challenge of the surgery.

But Ruth’s prayer was different. She asked God for healing, and she said that God had granted her prayer.