Isaiah 43:1-3

Last summer I went into the hospital as an outpatient to have a kidney stone removed. The doctor assured me I would be home by 6:30 that evening. As it was, I got home about two months later. I developed internal bleeding as a complication from what normally is a very simple surgery. It was two weeks before the doctors were able to stop the bleeding. Clots would form, and every time my body passed a clot, there was tremendous pain. I became discouraged and depressed. I was going down.

About two weeks after I was admitted, I woke up one morning and was aware that I had no feeling in my left leg, and no control over much of my body. I felt like a vegetable. It was very frightening and very depressing. My wife came in, looked at me and said, “Something else is going on, I am sure of it,” and insisted a neurologist visit my case. They found some bleeding on the brain. According to the doctor, it wasn’t causing any physical symptoms. Nevertheless, there it was, and I was really down. Discouraged, and deeply depressed.

I learned so much from this struggle. Because I went through it, survived it and became better through it, I was moved to share this experience with you, from the perspective of the movement of a soul through a period of illness. When I talk about soul, what do I mean? I will answer by using a concept from Tielhard de Chardin, the French mystic and scientist. When I read one of his insights a number of years ago, the experience completely changed my thinking, my theology, my view toward life and the Spirit. Chardin said that we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are not human beings seeking a spiritual experience. Rather, he said, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

I understand this to mean that we come from a divine place, we will return to a divine place, and in between we go through the experience we call life on planet Earth. Looking at it this way helps explain some of the mysteries, some of the tragedies, some of the hardships people go through. It is a journey of the soul—for the soul to stretch and become deeper and stronger and wiser, and more righteous.

As I was lying in the hospital trying to think how to pull myself out of the deep hole I was in, I thought of the late Norman Cousins and the example he set. A man of high energy, great enthusiasm for life, and wonderfully articulate—he was the editor of the Saturday Review—he wrote a book called The Anatomy of an Illness. It was his story about dealing with a very serious sickness he contracted. His doctors, after examining him, told him to get his affairs in order: he would not live long. But Cousins did some thinking about why he might have become sick. He reasoned it this way: If negative stresses and negative tensions can make a person become sick, then positive thinking can help make a person get well.

So he signed himself out of the hospital and created his own healing regimen. He took massive doses of vitamin C and other nutrients, and ordered some films by the Marx Brothers as well as the early versions of Candid Camera, with Allan Funt. Every day he watched these masters of comedy, and every day he laughed and laughed. “For every minute of laughter,” he said, “I would get ten minutes of relief from pain.”  In a few months’ time, Norman Cousins had regained his strength and was back to his normal self.

But, lying there in my hospital bed, in those endless hours of morning and afternoon and night and morning, I realized that I was too far into discouragement and depression to follow Cousins’ path. Yet certainly I could turn to the Scriptures for help and solace, as I had so many times in the past. I recognized my situation from the beginning of the 40th Psalm, which talks about “the desolate pit, the miry bog,” which is where I was.

One of the first passages I turned to was from Isaiah, that energetic, articulate spokesperson for God: the beginning verses of the 33rd chapter:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.

That is an incredible truth, beautifully stated, about who God is and how God loves us—the embrace of God: I have called you by name. You are mine. Whatever you go through, the rough waters, the frightening places, you do not have to worry. God will be with you.

I must have said the Jesus Prayer in my hospital bed ten, fifteen, twenty thousand times. Over the years I have learned that the great thing about the Jesus Prayer is repetition. You say it over, and over, and over, and over again. In my experience it is very rare to get immediate help with the Jesus Prayer, but the help will come down the line, in God’s own time. For those of you who do not know the Jesus Prayer, it is wonderfully simple:

Lord Jesus Christ Have mercy on me.
Make haste to help me.
Rescue me and save me.

And the last verse is all empowering; it is the critical verse:

Do Your will in my life.

Lord Jesus Christ, give me your mercy. Give me the largesse of your affectionate kindness. Make haste to help me. I need Your help—I’m open; I will receive Your help. Rescue me. Save me, because I need Your rescue. And then the bottom line of all Christian praying: Do Your will in my life.

I know this prayer so well. I have prayed it thousands of times. The passage from Isaiah has been a source of comfort often. Yet this time I could not connect with either of them. The words seemed very distant.

Then I must have recited the 23rd Psalm out loud a hundred times. How many times has that psalm powerfully affected me? As I repeated it: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, I thought about the meaning of each line. Because the Lord is our shepherd, we have nothing to worry about. Everything that we need will always be provided. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. I wanted to be lying down in green pastures, but I could not get there in my mind. He leads me beside the still waters. How I love the water, and how calming it is. But there was no still water for me; it was rough seas. No matter how I tried, I could not get inside the 23rd Psalm and find its reassurance and peace.  Then when I would come to He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake, I would wonder, “What did I do wrong? What unrighteous thing did I do to put me in this terrible place?” My depression became stronger. Near the end of the psalm, it talks about setting a table before me in the presence of my enemies. There is a banquet, a celebration. But I was far away from any celebration. My depression was getting more and more of a hold on me.

I tried many different kinds of things, sources of help that I have preached about, that you have told me have helped you. Nothing broke through.

So I visited many of Jesus’ healing stories. “This is going to be my redemption,” I thought. If we have faith, Jesus responds, I told myself. I thought about the time He visited Peter’s mother, who was ill with fever. He put His hand upon her and healed her. “Jesus, come into my room. Put your hand on my forehead and heal me.” But it didn’t happen. Then I thought of the man with the withered hand. Jesus said, “Stretch forth your hand,” and he was healed. I felt as if my whole body was withered, so I stretched forth my body. Nothing happened. The depression stayed.

Then I thought of one of my favorite of all healing stories, the remarkable story of the woman who hemorrhaged for twelve years. She had spent all of her resources trying to find a doctor who could heal her. Jesus was her last chance. When she heard He was going to be in the area where she lived, she sought Him out. But He was teaching in a crowd so large she felt she would never be able to get His attention.

Yet her faith was so strong that she felt if she could touch just the hem of His garment, she would be healed. You know the rest of the story. She reached Him, she touched the hem of His robe, and indeed she was healed. Lying in my hospital bed, I tried to touch the hem of His garment, but nothing happened. So I comforted myself, “I will find another scripture that will surely help me.”

Everything might have seemed lost, but the effect of my constant praying of the Jesus Prayer was working quietly in the background. It can take a long time to get an answer to this prayer. There is a saying that God works in mysterious ways, and I did eventually get an answer, although not in the dramatic, clear way I had been hoping for.

The answer to my prayer came in three parts. The first happened one night when I was feeling just out of it, hopeless, exhausted and unable to sleep. A nurse’s aide, a very simple, inarticulate women but, as I learned, spiritually wise, saw that I was in distress and could not get to sleep. She pulled a chair up beside the bed closely, took my hand and started gently rubbing it. “Reverend, remember,” she said to me, “God has a plan for every life.” Her words struck me powerfully. All my life I had been preaching that every life has a plan. There was a plan to what I was enduring now.

The second was the following night, when at two in the morning my bedside phone rang. It was my wife. “Arthur, are you all right?” she asked me. “I was lying here and I couldn’t get to sleep. I sensed you were in trouble.” For the next hour she patiently read to me from the Psalms, repeating lines whenever I asked. I don’t remember most of what she read, but I do remember the 23rd Psalm.

Later, another healing story came to me. At first I rejected it: “It doesn’t apply to me.”  It was the story of the man at the Pool of Bethesda. This was a large pool that was said to have healing powers. From time to time the waters would tremble, and people believed they had been stirred by an angel. Whoever could get into the water to receive the energy of the angel would be healed. This man had gone there as a young man expecting to be healed, but he needed people to help him into the water, and there was nobody there who would. He developed a bad attitude, complaining bitterly how others would push ahead of him.

Jesus came by and saw him. Perhaps the man expected Jesus to take pity on him, or help him into the water, or command others to. Instead He said, “Take up your bed and walk.”  The man found he was able to do that. He was healed.

After awhile I realized that the message was for me as well: “Arthur, it is up to you. Take charge of yourself.” God had told Norman Cousins to take charge of his own situation. God was also saying that to me. From that day, very gradually but surely, I began to move myself toward health. Today I am strong and getting stronger, and I am in charge of my own life.

God’s message in Isaiah is also for us today: “Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you. I am your God. I have called you by name. You are mine.”

When it seems that God is in hiding, when you call and call, “Where are You? Where are You?” and you still cannot make a connection, the lesson I learned is that with faith and patience you can begin to see God’s action in your life. God is not hiding. God is speaking in various ways, through other people, through scripture. Although in our daily lives, and even more often when we are in distress, we cannot feel God, cannot sense His presence, God never lets go of us. God is holding on. God is faithful.

Bless you in the growth of your soul. Know that when you are in rough waters God is there with you. When you go through the fire you will not be burned, for God is the Lord your God. God never gives up on one of God’s creations. Let us pray.

Gracious, loving, giving God, we thank You for Your love and for Your faithfulness. We ask that we might be open enough to trust. In trust, Amen.