I’ve never met you. My friend has shared with me your situation and I’ve been praying for you. Now, I feel compelled to write you.
You came very close to death. What did you see? I’m guessing you may have encountered your maker. Is that so? What was it like? I hope you can commit your experiences to memory. Though you cannot share them now, as you recover, you may have some profound thoughts to share.
Sometimes God snatches us away from whatever we were chasing after, much like He did with Paul on the road to Damascus. Paul was chasing and persecuting followers of Jesus at the time. He was blinded by an intense light, and the Lord Jesus stopped him and spoke him out of the light. He remained blinded for a time, and now much of the new testament is penned by Paul.
There was a little cartoon in a book I was reading recently, called “Blue Like Jazz” by Don Miller, that describes our chase in a humorous way: “Once there was a rabbit named Don Rabbit who lived in Oregon. Don Rabbit saw Sexy Carrot. He chased Sexy Carrot all over Oregon. Then Don Rabbit chased Sexy Carrot all across the U.S. to New York City (money). Then he chased Sexy Carrot to Washington D.C. (power). Then he chased Sexy Carrot all the way to the moon (dreams, love) and back. Now Don Rabbit and Sexy Carrot were exhausted by the chase. He made one great lunge for Sexy Carrot and he caught her!” (words not in italics mine)
So one might say that the moral of this story is: If you work really hard, eventually you will get what you are after. But on the next page, Don Rabbit dines on Sexy Carrot, keels over and dies. So perhaps the real moral of the story is: Chasing after what you want could kill you, or getting the thing you want will destroy you.
It depends on your perspective as to where your time is wasted. One might think that lying in a bed as you are now is a colossal waste of time. But is it, really? As your brain and body slowly recover, what’s happening in your mind and heart? From another perspective, it’s possible to think that you are being rescued from the chase and from false realities which, seeming real, are a true waste of time. Is there something else you are encountering now? —- Something more eternal, more true?
I’m praying that you will recover fully, but no matter how you recover, no doubt you will be changed. Will you be thankful for the change? Paul was. He said in Romans 8:38,39, “For I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The thought that I (or any of us) can have a deep personal relationship with the creator of the universe just blows me away. I can’t think of anything else that compares to knowing the God who loved me when He made me, loves me while I chase after other things, ignoring Him, and loves me to eternity. No other knowledge, love, or possession comes close.
I’m praying for you that God shows Himself to you, that you see what’s real and true and eternal, and that as you recover, you can put all things pertaining to your life in perspective. Not that you had any kind of bad perspective before —- how would I know? And it is not for me to know.