Blessure

I love it when God reveals himself and catches me off guard. It’s really a delightful feeling to be surprised in a way that profoundly yet simply affirms that God is in the moment with you. Sometimes it can sneak in with such subtly but finish off like the roar of a lion with His sovereignty and succinctness.

Today I experienced just that. I was visiting with one of my hospice patients. Both the social worker and one of the volunteers and shared with me that this man was in tears because he missed his dear deceased wife, was sure that if there was a heaven she was there and was struggling with disbelief on his own part that neither heaven nor God were a sure thing for him.

H was struggling with what is common to a lot of people today: lack of information; lack of faith; a void of hope; a sense of right and wrong but an inability to acknowledge that the definition of right and wrong emerges from a supreme being. Add to that a view point that the Bible is a great literary work but cannot be trusted to represent a God if He did exist because the authorship is assumed to be fallible mankind. In short, no on-board compass to believe in anything unseen.

I tried several different approaches to logically and lovingly present an apologetic for the existence of God: Talking about the spiritual nature of the law; of love, of human emotion and when he referred to someone as evil, our inherent ability to recognize good and evil.

It seemed like he enjoyed the conversation and appreciated the effort but just could not believe in the unseen. It had to be tangible and palpable.

Referring back to his wife, his son, his career and all the other things he felt so grateful for, He said, “ I have been one very lucky man in my life.”

I responded by stating that he might want to consider that he was blessed instead. He muttered back something to the effect that blessing meant wounded. Now me being who I am I replied to that with a Tim Allen, “eeehhh?”

What he was referring to, he explained, was that the phonetic cross over of “blessed” in English sounds close to the French word blessure which is a noun for injury or wound.

Now you all can make of that whatever you want but this was the moment that God interceded and established His awareness of the conversation and His contribution at least for my benefit.

My first reaction was that these two words are about as far apart as you can possibly get. And then . . . it hit me, “ by His wounds we are healed.” The ultimate blessing we have received was because Christ was wounded for us. And it went on from there: Was I not blessed myself this past year through the wounds I received in the accident I experienced? Have I not also been blessed by those whose wounds drew them to a deeper intimacy with the God that loves us? I was overwhelmed with God’s love and His presence.

Now throughout the entire conversation my patient, a man in his early 80’s would reach for a tissue and wipe a tear from his eye. As this epiphany hit me, I said’ “ pardon me but my turn to reach for the tissues.”

I was in awe of what had just happened. Not just that God had spoken to me; I’m used to that. More awesome was the fact that he spoke to me through an unbelieving spirit such as this man who lacked faith.

The irony was that as I shared the explanation for my tears of joy, this man was actually happy for me but could not spiritually embrace what he just witnessed. How sad is that?

As on previous visits, he was very receptive to prayer and his hand trembled as we prayed. And also like former occasions, he thanked me for going out of my way to visit and welcomed the notion of my stopping by again another time.

I believe this man is a work in progress. I won’t force my beliefs on him any further than what he will permit me to share, but I can see God is working in his life. He (the patient) even taught me previously (at my request) how to say “God loves you” in a foreign language that he taught for many years. (So I could say it back to him in his heart language?)

I can only walk away from all of this today being assured and blessed that God was in the moment with me today. I did not walk alone.

I am also prayerfully hoping that tonight as this man falls asleep, he is praying through the words spoken to Jesus in Mark 9:24b " . . . help me overcome my unbelief!"