Experiencing God - Faith 163

I would like to share a story I found in one of the Chicken Soup series:

"On night in April, 1997, Andrew was having a routine evening at work. Andrew was the supervisor for the local emergency medical services that provides life emergency support. He was hoping for a quiet end to his shift when a call came over his radio that there was an unconscious person at the local Kmart. He turned his truck in the direction of the strip mall. He would be backup and support to a team of paramedics that responded ahead of him.

When Andrew arrived, a middle aged man was sitting in the shoe department acting somewhat confused. The man was talking with the ambulance crew, then became unresponsive, and then began responding again. Within a few minutes, however, he was unconscious, and on the floor. When the paramedics placed the heart monitor on the man’s chest, they saw on the display what they call a fatal heart rhythm. His heart was beating incredibly fast and not effectively pumping blood to his vital organs. In that state, he wouldn’t be able to survive long.

The team began their work. They quickly administered the prescribed medications and contacted the emergency department doctor to give them orders. Soon, however, it was obvious that the medications had failed to work and the man’s condition worsened. Their next step was to defibrillate him with an electric current to attempt to get his heart back into healthy rhythm.

After an initial electric shock, the man came around but then deteriorated, and again lost consciousness. After another electrical shock, he was brought to consciousness. But instead of calm and compliant behavior, he was belligerent and was obviously quite angry with them. The man was transported to the emergency department at the hospital close by, and Andrew returned home from his shift. He was perplexed that the man seemed so angry with them for saving him, while most people are grateful beyond words.

About a month later a letter arrived at the emergency department addressed to the ER staff and ambulance crew. The letter was from the man whom they’d rescued in the shoe department at Kmart.

In the letter he thanked everyone for their love and support toward him when he needed them. He said that he since undergone bypass surgery and had a device implanted in his heart that would keep his heart rhythm normal, and he was growing stronger every day. He also apologized for getting angry with the crew when they revived him. The rest of his letter read:

I will never be fully able to thank you for what you’ve done for me, but I will be trying to move forward with the rest of my life, making it as vibrant and positive as possible as an example to others who may be ignoring their health in the way that I did. Then he wrote: I went to heaven, at least twice. It was a glorious experience and I still revel in the sense of peace and serenity I experienced in those few brief moments. I now fully understand and accept that it was not my time to go. I know enough now to not fear death, but to love and respect life, and to seek the plan I know God still has for me. For the rest of my life, I have the pleasure of living now, with more than a mere belief in God and the place He has waiting for us, but rather with the fact that these things are all very real and are meant for all who choose to follow Him." End 
Chicken Soup for Christian Souls

Many scripture readings speak of faith. What is faith? It is not something that we can easily explain, but it is something that we all experience at some level. The words of the man who was revived by the Paramedics describe it well. “For the rest of my life, I have the pleasure of living now with more than a belief in God and the place He has waiting for us, but rather with the fact that these things are all very real and are meant for all who choose to follow Him.” Faith is something that you know with certainly in your heart, something that affects your life and the direction that it takes, but cannot be proven in our ordinary ways of proving things.

The prophets in Old Testament were people of faith, and they were called to speak to the people about faith matters, about a relationship with God, and the importance of following a way of life that was ordained by God for each of us.   

From the prophet Ezekiel we read: "A spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard one speaking to me: “Son of Man, I am sending you to the children of Israel, to a nation who has rebelled against me. Whether they hear or refuse to hear, they shall know that there has been a prophet among you.”

 God is quite anxious for us to hear his voice, hear the way he speaks to us, to understand His message of salvation, to live the life that we have been designed to live; but as Ann Murry’s old familiar song goes, “clouds get in our way”; clouds that block our view of the reality of God and His love for us; clouds that create an illusion that life has only to do with the things that we can see, the things we can explain, and the things we can possess.

  In psalm 123, we hear an appeal to faith: To you, I lift up my eyes, O you, who are enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, so my eyes look to the Lord who has mercy on us.” The psalmist is speaking about our attentiveness. “As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, so my eyes look to the Lord.” Where is our attentiveness? Is our attentiveness on God, and his plan for us, or is it on the many other things that distract us from even thinking of God?

St. Paul was a man of incredible faith. On the road to Damascus, his eyes were opened to the presence of Christ in such a way that his life was transformed from the one who persecuted Christians, to one who brought faith in Christ to all areas of the known world. It was faith, not something he could verify with some tangible evidence or proof, that became the driving force behind all his actions. You might say that he was very attentive to God. In his letter to the Corinthians, he is writing about something in his life that seems, or at least he feels, to be an obstacle to his faith. He calls it “a thorn that was given in the flesh", something that he prayed many times would leave him. We don’t know what it is, but perhaps it is something that we ourselves can relate too. We all have things in our lives that we would rather not live with.  If only I were bolder, if only I could have that dynamic personality or strength or gift, if only I were a dynamic speaker, and so on. We perhaps all have out lists, our demands, of things we would like to get rid of (or gain) in order to be more perfect. 

The conclusions that St. Paul reached, and perhaps a conclusion we ourselves have to reach is that grace, faith, our relationship with Christ is sufficient to sustain us in all aspects of our life. These thorns, these parts of our humanity, are common to all of us, and perhaps they are there to remind us that we are saved by grace, through faith, and not by anything that we ourselves possess; so we lift our eyes and surrender to the one who is enthroned in the heavens and live in our hearts.

The man who was revived by the paramedics experienced God’s revelation to him at the time when he had surrendered all illusions about himself and the things around him. Clouds no longer got in his way. He experienced the truth. Is this also not the truth that God wants us to experience?