Walking through the trees

Friday, October 27, 2023

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Walking through the trees

I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

Awful things happen to us sometimes. We lose our babies, we lose our jobs, we lose our husbands or our wives. My friend from Korea, now in his mid 60’s, lost one thing after another.

Eventually he lost his health. Tightening in his back, a spinal stenosis eventually did not allow him to walk, but surgery was still an option. When he awoke from the surgery he was told it was successful and he felt happy. Then the anesthetic wore off and his leg was in such pain he could not help but scream.

For nineteen days his nurse injected him every four hours with morphine. On the nineteenth day he told his doctor he must leave the hospital or he would become addicted to opiates. His doctor agreed but warned him not to begin taking pills when he got home. If he did the addiction would come home to roost. He promised he would not.

Miserable one that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

He kept his promise.He screamed and wept, but he did not take the pills. His youngest daughter, just turned 20, stayed with him, nursed him, listened to his screams, and loved him.

But God did not remove his back pain. After the surgery his prayers bounced off the ceiling and fell back on his bed. He became angry at God for one of the few times in his life. His Christianity turned out to be more than a little passive aggressive. Inside his mind he blamed God and became bitter.

Still, his back pain continued. God seemed to pay no attention to his demands. He had trusted God and nothing changed. Now he screamed at God, and nothing changed. So he gave up. He did not stop believing God was his Source. But he gave up the ghost of his earlier spirituality.

Like Job, right?

As he settled into long days of kind-of-numb but also kind-of-patient acceptance, his body began to heal. He began to see that his faith in God now had more to do with God than with himself. He lost his shopping list, and in its absence God’s presence meant more than it ever had before.

This is something we read about. My friend experienced it. His daughter watched this transformation in her dad. I am sure she will never forget it.

Gradually, her father felt a little better, then a lot, and by the time I met him three years later, his back was healed.

Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord.

My friend is a pastor and a professor, at least he could be. He worked his way, on a path not unlike that of Fr. James Martin, out of a very successful and profitable vice presidency in a large company in Seoul, into a small Baptist seminary in Decatur, Georgia, where he studied through his M.Div and his D.Min. This man can do whatever he wants.

He has always wanted to be a “missionary.” But of course that word requires definition. In his case, having been divorced twice in unusual circumstances, his mission board wants to know more about his state of mind before sending him to far-off lands to minister to unchurched and usually non-Christian groups of men and women.

There are no far-off lands for him, anymore. He has traveled the world. But until he received a Baptist tract one day, his native Roman Catholicism did not incline him toward speaking about Jesus to others. And really, before he endured his back pain and near paralysis, he had very little to say.

Now he can speak out of the darkness, as could Job. He trusted Jesus, he trusted his heavenly Father, and found his way into gentle forgiveness of the damage done to his family by his first wife, and then his second. He is a gentle soul, an enneagram Nine, I have little doubt, who avoids conflict and makes peace wherever he goes. He has learned to pray.

I was thinking I should be praying

as I gave her a ride (she crashed her car the other day).

I was thinking I should be praying

as I was so tired all I could do was doze off for a while.

I was thinking I should be praying

as I read a book about kindness, goodness and beauty.

I was thinking I should be praying…

and I was. – Clarence Heller

What will happen next to me, to Margaret, to our friends, to our family? I am glad to have gotten to spend time with my new friend, to watch what happened in his life when he gave up his demands and came empty and naked back to God. I hope I have learned something.

I walk among trees.

The conversations of their falling leaves.

A little breeze moves among them casually.

I think of how long they’ve been here,

and their favorite stories.

They know where every branch is,

mindful of every root hair and what it touches.

Under grey sky, not really cold yet,

they stand in faithfulness.

Little birds work up and down their limbs,

and sometimes sing.

 

Like my soul, they know things

they don’t need to tell me.

But we both like it

when I walk beneath them. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes

 (Romans 7, Psalm 119, Matthew 11, Luke 12)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

#