Faith Before the First Injection

On July 4, 1885, nine-year-old Joseph Meister was attacked by a rabid dog near his village in Alsace, suffering fourteen bite wounds on his hands, legs, and thighs. In that era, rabies meant certain death once symptoms appeared. Joseph's desperate mother brought him hundreds of miles to Paris, to the laboratory of Louis Pasteur, a chemist who had been developing an experimental rabies vaccine — one tested only on animals, never on a human being.

Pasteur agonized over the decision. He was not a physician. The vaccine was unproven. But on July 6, with physicians Dr. Jacques-Joseph Grancher and Dr. Alfred Vulpian consulting, he began a course of thirteen inoculations over ten days, each containing a progressively stronger strain of the virus. Joseph endured every injection. And Joseph lived.

What strikes me about this story is Joseph's mother. She did the one thing she could — she brought her wounded child to the person who held the remedy, even though that remedy had never been tried before. It was an act of desperate, determined faith.

James writes, "Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well" (James 5:14-15). Sometimes healing begins not with certainty but with the courage to carry our brokenness to the One who holds the cure. We may not understand the process. The outcome may feel uncertain. But Scripture's call is clear: bring the afflicted to the Healer, and trust the Lord to do what only He can.