‘In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us’ (Romans 8:37).
One day, during that first critical week after my motor cycle accident, when my life hung in the balance, I was trying to read a small New Testament.
It was not easy. With my left arm and left shoulder blade fractured, tubes stuck in my right arm, a huge incision in my abdomen, and my injured spine preventing me from sitting, I had to hold it in my one usable hand, with my body in the only comfortable position I could find, half way between lying on my back and my side.
While I was doing this, a well-built cleaner came into the ward, wielding a powerful floor polishing machine. She was large, healthy and strong.
She must have thought I was using a prayer book, for as she polished her way past my bed, she said, ‘Say one for me, will you?’
It was only afterwards that I realized the irony of this. Here was I at the point of death, humanly speaking. And yet she, apparently in the peak of health, asked me to pray for her!
Who was reigning in life? (Romans 5:17,21).
To read more on this topic see Living in the Image of God, Barry Chant (Miranda: Tabor, 2012 available in eBook and Paperback) from which this edited extract is taken.
JESUS CHRIST WAS A MAN OF HIS WORD
As time went on, I did recover (of course!). But another problem developed. My left arm was found to be paralysed at the shoulder. It hung helplessly like a long, distended, uncooked sausage at my side. There was no pain, but I simply had no power to move it.
It was the considered opinion of a group of specialists who examined me that nothing could be done. I would have to accept the fact of a useless arm for the rest of my life. When you are 19 years old, that is not exactly good news!
‘If you had a psychological problem,’ said one physician, ‘your faith would be a great help to you. But you have an organic injury. Faith cannot heal organic injuries.’
I thought I was strong in faith, but I walked out of the surgery feeling shaken.
I wasn’t to be put off, but they were not easy days.
I had read somewhere that David Livingstone once said, ‘Jesus Christ was a gentleman. He was a man of his word.’ If that was true, then I, too, could trust his words. Jesus declared,
`These signs will accompany those who believe. . . they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well’ (Mark 16:17).
My pastor, and others had laid hands on me and so I believed that I would recover.
To read more on this topic see Living in the Image of God, Barry Chant (Miranda: Tabor, 2012 available in eBook and Paperback) from which this edited extract is taken.