O Lord, when I am bewildered and the
world is all noise and confusion around me and I don’t know which way to go and
am frightened, then be thou with me. Put thy hand on my should and let thy
strength invade my weakness and thy light burn the mist from my mind. Help me
to step forward with faith in the way I should go.
So, there I was sitting in the
middle of the living room, alone in the middle of the night. I had about forty hours until surgery…They had diagnosed me with a Chairi
malformation. I had never heard of it before, but if it was the
culprit that was ravaging my body, then I would do anything to fix it. My problem was that I didn’t think I
could make it another 40 hours. I had
lived with this issue for years and managed to keep it under control, but a fall on the ice in January had made the problem much much worse.
It had begun to affect everything…my
sleep, my energy, it became hard to eat and I constantly felt electric shocks
radiating through my ear. More
importantly, it was affecting the people I love…my wife, my children, the
church and even my relationship with God.
The hope was that the surgery would
fix everything. But I didn’t think I could make it that long. For the first time in my life I looked out
into the woods and though that it might be best for everybody if I disappeared and never came
back.
It hadn’t been the first time
God-followers had that thought, no matter how fleeting. Elijah
had the entire country talking about him.
The day before he had staged a contest between him and his God and the
450 prophets of Baal. He won…Baal was
nowhere to be found and God came through in a literal fiery way. Then, Elijah had the prophets of Baal killed.
On the biggest stage in the
country, Elijah prevailed…he had a great day.
But then something happened.
Jezebel, the queen, sent word to Elijah that she had a contract out on
his life and he would be dead in 24 hours.
And something happened to Elijah when he heard the news…something
strange happened to this prophet of God…this forerunner of the messiah who
pushed and pushed boundaries like prophets do…he got scared….he feared for his
life. You would think he would have been
scared the day before when the entire country was watching his battle against
450 prophets of Baal…but he didn’t…he got scared when he heard the defeated
queen had put a contract out on his life.
And he ran.
The greatest prophet of God
since Moses…and the greatest prophet of God until Christ ran. Just took off into the wilderness and fell
down under a broom tree and waited to die.
After Moses risked his life to free the Israelites
from Egypt, they all began grumbling and whining against him for some meat.
This bothered Moses so badly that he said to God:Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep
wailing to me, ‘Give us meat to eat!’I cannot carry all these people by myself;
the burden is too heavy for me. If this is how you intend to treat me, just go
ahead and kill me. Do me a favor and spare me this misery!”
In the book of Job, we see that after Job is stripped
of his health, family, and wealth– he laments and curses the day he was born: Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up
the ghost when I came out of the belly?
–Job 3:11
After the Ninevites were saved by
Jonah’s preaching, he was so angry he told God to kill him. I have been in the ministry a long
time and I have seen a lot of people, hundreds, who loved God passionately but
didn’t want to go on. And I always used
to pity them. After my visits with them
I would shake my head, say a prayer for them and ask God to heal them. But I could never shake this feeling I had
inside me that if they just trusted in the Lord enough they wouldn’t think
that. One of the many things this
illness has taught me is not to be so quick to judge or shake my head or come
up with a one line remedy that would make believers feel differently about
their lot. If these great prophets of
God begged God to kill them, well then us ordinary followers are subject to the
same pain life throws our way.
But God always seems to find a way
to set us back on course…the God of life is always showing us life from a
different perspective. He sent angels to
pastor Elijah, he spoke to Job himself, and he sent a big fish to save
Jonah. And he sent his son, the
resurrection and the life to save us.
In the middle of the night, forty
hours before my brain surgery, my mind was a flood with people who I have sat
with that had it much worse off than I did…the mourners who lost a spouse or a
child…the depressed who couldn't seem to crawl out of the deep dark hole they were
in…and I realized that God didn’t send a fish to knock some sense into me or
angels to feed me…he sent my family to love me and my church to be my
angles, It is a odd thing when
congregations pastor their pastor, but you did…with your cards, letters and
calls you cradled me, you wrapped the love of God around me.
And that is what god me through the
next forty hours before surgery…hearing Grant pray for me, feeling Lucy hug me
and whisper that she loves me, feeling my strong Mary holding me up.
I am a type A person, I always want to push
through no matter how I feel…my body is just wired that way…keep going…."the
woods are lovely dark and deep but I have miles to go before I sleep."
This experience has reminded me of the
ancient practice of T’shuvah. In the old
testament, God commanded that every seven years the people should let the land
rest…every seven years the people needed a break and so did the land…the harder
they pushed the land the less it would produce every year. The problem was that the Hebrews didn’t do
that,,,they never let the land rest…and look what happened…famine, drought, war
and eventual destruction. I think that
was happening to me…I didn’t practice T’shuva and things got bad. We need to
rest…to enjoy life and let the crops of our heart rejuvenate.
Revelation is a difficult book, even
for biblical scholars. Most think that
once we are in heaven God will wipe every tear from our eyes and there will be
no more pain. But it didn’t work that
way for me. My pain, emotional/physical and spiritual were taken away in the
hear and now.
In life we are constantly moving
back and forth in time, back and forth between what was and what is and what
might be. But the writer of Revelation never let's you get stuck in just one
time zone, saying: "And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'See,
the home of God is among mortals.'" In other words, God's right here in
the middle of ordinary life, no matter where you are. And if we let him, he is
wiping tears from our eyes and relieving us from pain. I wonder if right here right now…That Jesus,
making good on his promise, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Now, wouldn’t that be something?
I suppose everybody goes through
this at some point in their lives, but during my ordeal, it was hard for to
put myself and my family in God’s
hands…but next time let the words of my mouth and the cry of my heart
be that of Chist on the cross, “Lord in your hands I commit
my spirit.’ Into your
hands I commit my life, my
families life…and the life of the
world.”
