This is Love – More updates on my health and progress

(If you are in this web site for the first time, click here to read my first post of going through surgery to correct a blocked cardiac artery.)

No fear.

It is one thing to walk around with a t-shirt proclaiming that we are fearless, as though being a walking billboard for such bravado is somehow the aphrodisiac that will make it so.

It is another thing to come face to face with that nameless something that we all dread – the something that we know is reality, yet in our prescient foresight think we can avoid by avoiding.

Mine shocked me in those dragging minutes of pain, of terse conversation and succinct announcement, of silent painful waiting. Where was the fear, where the overpowering anxious thoughts?

Such thinking is normal. “What about Judy? What about the children? There are so many financial decisions and problems, the tasks left undone around the house, the unsaid words of encouragement, of correction, of strength, of tenderness . . . of love.”

And yet, as I lay there, came the peace. Where does such peace come from to trump so many “important” threads of thinking and reacting, of reaching out to those who “need” me, of managing what I must handle?

But if the end had come for me, would the result have been any different? Would the world have suddenly spun out of control, throwing good people all over the place, and leading to universal disasters of gargantuan proportions? I think not.

Some would have been thrown for a major loop, challenged to come to grips with that universal specter – death. My beloved and our children would certainly have felt the earth spinning off kilter for some time as they adjusted to life without.

Life without me - as though I was the center of the universe; how subtly I have bought into this ego-centric perspective.

If I lay there facing death without fear and anxiety, what does that say but Someone greater has all this in His hand? I claim no power over the universal anxious threat, no overriding strength to quell the rising bile of fear. Rather, it was rest that overcame me and that not of my own thought or intention – it was a rest born of a deep and transforming grace working its natural fruit in my life.

“‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’
‘O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?’
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law;
But thanks be to God, who gives us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1Cor.15:54b-57, ESV)

My life is not worth much, in and of myself, but because of the sacrifice of Another, my life takes its value from Him. So, freedom from fear is to His credit, a rest-driven life the gift of His making.

Let this post leave you with another George Herbert excerpt, this from his poem Even-Song:

My God, thou art all love.
Not one poore minute 'scapes thy breast,
But brings a favour from above;
And in this love, more than in bed, I rest.

My prayer is that all who read this will find that rest that surpasses all human knowledge. It is found in profound peace with God and with man. Only there will we be truly free to trust to such a measure that we discover rest. (Philippians 4:4-7)

Happy and Blessed New Year to you all! - Kevin