May 21 2001

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Here Is My Hope: A Book of Healing and Prayer
Randi Henderson and Richard Marek
Doubleday, 248 pages, $23.95

In the main rotunda of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore stands a ten-foot-tall statue of Jesus, his outstretched hands beckoning all below to come.

Thousands of prayers written by patients, families, and Johns Hopkins staff are left at the base of the marble sculpture every year. In Here Is My Hope, authors Henderson and Marek tell several of the stories behind those prayers.

We meet Grayson Gilbert, a 6-year-old boy diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, whose prayers are not for himself but the other children in the hospital; Lillie Shockney, the education director for the Johns Hopkins Breast Center, who undergoes a double mastectomy to save her own life; and Levi Watkins, a renowned cardiac surgeon who held his own father's heart in his hands during emergency surgery.

The text may at times read like the script for a Pax TV reality series, but the stories and petitions are inspiring nonetheless.

Johns Hopkins Medicine's site offers articles on "Spirituality and Health Care" and the hospital's history, both of which discuss the statue and its significance.