Daily Devotional

The high fever and convulsion came on quickly. In the emergency room I was admitted quickly and soon was in a room being cared for by a host of nurses and technicians. I was to learn that I had become septic and was in danger of the sepsis invading my vital organs. They filled with me fluids and antibiotics as I waited for my numbers to normalize. Karon never left my side.  

One night I fell asleep and had an unusually vivid dream. I was on an airplane to Turkey. I was certain in my dream that where I was heading was going to be an amazing experience. I remember being so excited!

Suddenly, I woke up to loud alarms and a ring of doctors, nurses and technicians surrounding my hospital bed. I had stopped breathing and the alarm had signaled the “crash team.” I was still in a dream state as they moved my body into position and hooked up some machine.

I could see a fuzzy image of Karon in between the white-coated medical staff. In that moment she never looked more beautiful! I truly believed I was heading for heaven. As I focused on her face, I mouthed some words as if to say, “I’m okay. I am at peace.” I really was!

Soon, I came to my full senses. The team had done their job. My heart was beating well, my oxygen levels were up and I was breathing on my own. One of the technicians stayed behind as the rest of the crash team left. He knew me as a pastor in the community and began to share what had happened. He assured me that I was going to be fine but he was quick to comment on what a blessing it was to have the crash team nearby. Apparently, I was slumped down in such a way that I was compressing my air hose and my oxygen was completely cut off. Without the monitors warning them I would have slowly died.

A few days later, one of my daughters came to the hospital to visit. She arrived at the nurse’s station but no one was there. The alarms were sounding and the crash team was once-again scrambling, only this time to the room next door to me. Sadly, the woman in that room passed away. Even sadder, I soon discovered it was the wife of one of my JARON Ministries board members. What a sad moment as I left the hospital in a wheelchair and passed her room. I stopped to express my love to him. The reality of death was so real!

I have often wondered how I would face my own death. Although this hospital experience was, we think, a false alarm, I nonetheless thought it was the real thing. And yet, I had such overwhelming peace! My only worry was whether my amazing wife would experience that same peace. Later, she told me she did. Since that time the timeless words of the apostle Paul have never become more real:  

2 Corinthians 5:1-10 “For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked.  For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge. Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight—we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.”

New American Standard Bible (NASB) Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation