LONDON (RNS) — A British pastor's wife who claims the power of prayer cured her injuries was told her incapacity benefits could not be stopped because the government's computers didn't have a “miracle” button.
As a result, June Clarke of Plymouth, England, received more than $7,000 she didn't even want — and she could not get the government to take it back.
The 56-year-old woman spent six years in a wheelchair after she was injured in a fall on a slippery floor while at work. Her hip, pelvis and spine were badly damaged, and she had to give up her job when her condition worsened.
But Clarke says she was healed one year ago after her husband, Stuart Clarke, pastor at Hooe Baptist Church in Plymouth, prayed every day for her to be made well.
When she realized four months later that the cure appeared permanent, she asked the government to stop the incapacity payments, saying, “I felt uncomfortable taking benefits when I didn't need them.”
But when she contacted the benefits office, she said, she was told its computers weren't programmed to recognize an apparently miraculous recovery and that “we haven't got a button to push that says ‘miracle.' ”
Eventually, Mrs. Clarke managed to get the monthly $1,200-plus benefits checks stopped, but the government still won't allow her to return the $7,000-plus she already had received.
“It wasn't ours to spend,” her husband insisted. “It can't be that often that a government gets a complaint about unwanted cash.”
Mrs. Clarke reports she finally worked out an agreement with the benefits office under which she can work as a care provider to get the money back into government coffers.