Month: December 2022

Lessons from a Kidney Stone

‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose’ – Romans 8:28 (NIV)

To whatever extent I’ve complained of pain before this past Tuesday, I take it back.  Prior to that fateful day, I equated pain with the day I accidentally slammed my hand in my car door, as in, the door literally shut with my hand between it and the car frame.  After opening the door, I raced into the house, out of earshot of my wife and young daughter, where I let loose a torrent of screaming, that as best we know, is still hanging in space over Phoenixville, Pennsylvania (thank you Jean Shepherd).

But now I would gladly let you slam my hand in a car door a hundred times before re-experiencing what happened on Tuesday, when for the first (and please god last) time I passed a kidney stone. 

I hadn’t realized it, but I had probably been dealing with it for the previous three weeks.  I had some back pain and other symptoms, which I chalked up to other things.  But when the moment of truth arrived, as the stone left its refuge in my kidney, there was no mistaking it.  On the drive to the hospital, I developed a deep appreciation for the good folks who fill in potholes as my poor wife withstood my plaintive cries for mercy.  When we arrived, the triage nurse asked me what my pain level was on a scale of one to ten.  I told her eleven (and yes, I was ready with the reference to This is Spinal Tap).  Had she chosen to knock me out with a wooden mallet, I would have considered it a blessing. 

If you think I’m being melodramatic, you’ve never had a kidney stone.  For a man, it is considered the male version of childbirth.  I’m not sure how passing a 3mm piece of calcified gunk compares to a woman pushing out an eight-pound baby, but many women who have had both experiences claim that passing a kidney stone is worse!  Whether it is or not, you get the idea.  Passing a kidney stone is sheer hell. 

I have since passed the stone (it was a boy; I named it Atilla).  Which enables me to now say that, despite the hell of it, and the fact that I am still recovering from both the trauma of the event and the side effects of its treatment, the experience was not without its benefits.  Don’t get me wrong: I plan on doing everything in my power to ensure I never have another kidney stone again (just one example, no more spinach salads for me; apparently my ‘healthy’ practice of eating them several times a week may have been a contributing factor; the things Popeye never told us!).  And I have experienced more than a few moments of frustration and exasperation. But in the midst of my harrowing ordeal, I have experienced grace, and learned at least three important lessons. 

First, there were the miracles. 

My time at the hospital was not fun.  I had to wait a long time before the staff gave me anything for the pain.  I stood (sitting or lying down was NOT an option), first in the lobby and then in my private ER room, writhing in pain, praying they would come and help me, when after two hours, in walked a friend and member of the church I serve.  He had personal experience with stones and came as soon as he heard.  He no sooner began to pray for me than the nurse finally walked in with the pain medication for my IV.  Literally within seconds. 

Later that night, after I had been sent home with painkillers and instructions to drink heavily (water that is), I continued to struggle.  The super-ibuprofen didn’t kick in as quickly orally as intravenously.  I was at the end of my rope, ready to reach for the Percocet, which I had been instructed to use only if all else failed and have a deep, personal aversion to (I’ve seen too many people get hooked) when, shall we say, the dam broke, and the stone passed.  It was only after, when I looked at my phone, that I saw that another dear friend, who also had experience with stones, had sent me a GIF of George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life celebrating in front of the sign for Bedford Falls.  Under the celebrating George were the words, ‘It passed!’  My friend, who had been praying, sent it as an encouragement.  But it arrived simultaneously with the deluge that set me free. 

I suppose you could chalk both events up to coincidence.  But I believe in both the power of prayer and Christian fellowship.  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, the Book of James tells us, and I believe my friend’s prayers were both.  Also, there is something to be said in not facing things alone.  God made us for community, and we stand stronger together than we do as individuals.  Having good Christian friends to call on in a time of distress is a treasure of measureless worth.  Many prayed for me yesterday, but I believe these two ‘God incidences,’ as Philip Yancey would say, were especially coordinated to remind me of the immense blessing of prayer and fellowship.  And so, as a result of the dread Atilla, I hope to be less likely to take such things for granted. 

Second, well, back to the pain again. 

I’ve already described the pain as best I can.  Words fail in the effort.  But having gone through it, I believe I’ve learned a lesson in compassion.  As a pastor, I deal with people in physical pain all the time.  I don’t believe I have ever dismissed anyone’s pain, but not having experienced anything so severe, I can’t say I’ve ever fully understood it either.  In a way, that was a blessing.  But in another way, so is this.  To whatever extent I have ever failed to consider the physical pain of another, to the extent I have responded to it with dry platitudes or dismissiveness, I repent.  The word compassion literally means, ‘to suffer with.’  From now on, I will try to do a better job of entering others suffering, walking with them through it, and doing so with a greater understanding.  This too then is a gift, one I pray will make me not only a better pastor, but a better person. 

And third, there is the love of God. 

By this, I don’t just mean that his love was with me in some theoretical sense.  I mean it was with me, is always with me, in the most real sense.  As I was writhing in pain, I thought of Jesus and the pain he endured on the Cross.  As bad as my pain was, it was a mere drop in the bucket compared to his.  Jesus felt, not only excruciating physical pain (excruciating, derived from crucifixion, is a word that was created to describe the kind of pain he experienced), but also the spiritual agony of carrying the sin of the world.  How did he ever endure it?  Why did he ever endure it?  Romans 5:7-8 tells us, ‘Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die…’  Let me stop there a moment.  After the pain I endured, I have to say that left to my own inclinations, it would be awfully hard to volunteer for a kidney stone, let alone die on a cross, for the sake of anyone; probably not even for a good person, certainly not for someone who hurt me.  But as the passage goes on to tell us, ‘…but God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

The God of the universe took something far worse than a kidney stone for us.  Such were my thoughts as I battled Atilla.  There is only one conclusion to draw from such a reality.

God REALLY loves us. 

I had been struggling this Advent season before the stone.  The past several years have been hard ones for my family (they’ve probably been hard for many of you as well).  I was having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit.  But after this stone, well, what can I say?  I’ve been reminded of God’s miracles, of the power of prayer and the value of Christian brothers and sisters.  I’ve learned to be more compassionate.  And, best of all, I’ve been reminded why Christmas happened in the first place.  ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).  Indeed, he loves the world so much, you and me so much, that he took far more than a kidney stone to prove his love. 

Again, don’t get me wrong.  I am going to pray that I never have another kidney stone again.  Once in a lifetime is enough for me.  I hope you never have one (or another one) either.  But if you do, or if I do, I hope that it draws us even closer to the one who loved us so much that he was willing to endure far worse.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Believe

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to be children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  John 1:1-5; 10-14 (NRSV).

The story of Christmas is a story of miracles.  The Gospels tell of the stunning announcement to Mary that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bring forth the Son who would be the Savior of the world.  Luke tells of angelic hosts singing ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ as they announced the arrival of the miracle child.  Indeed, the entire Christmas event is from start to finish a supernatural one.  The Gospel accounts of the Nativity make this clear, but it is John who proclaims it most strikingly.  For while Matthew and Luke record the details of what happened, John strikes at the heart of the matter: the mind-boggling reality that Christmas is about nothing less than God becoming human.  The author of creation stepped into his story, became one of the characters, that each of our stories might be enriched by his.  John, more than any Gospel writer, was able to capture the wonder of the event, as he wrote of how the Word, God himself, became flesh and dwelled among us.

Where did he ever find the words?  Surely, they were God-breathed, but we shouldn’t miss John’s own sense of wonder.  John was, apparently, the kind of man who wondered about things.  His was not a matter-of-fact intellect; his was the kind that could soar into the heavens and grasp starlight.  In the mystical prologue to his Gospel, he writes of believing in the name of Jesus, and believing seems to have been what John was all about.  It is the stated purpose of his Gospel: ‘these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31).  Over and over, this theme is repeated.  ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe‘ (20:20).   ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him, might not perish but have eternal life’ (3:16).  Yes, John was a believer.  Not, mind you, the gullible sort who accepts every cock-eyed story that comes down the pike, but the kind who looks at the world with critical yet wondering eyes, thinks deeply, and allows his heart to guide him.  Nor was he the kind of believer who simply gives a vague intellectual assent to some propositional truth.  No, John was a BELIEVER – the kind who, once his heart was in line with the subject of belief, was willing to believe with the entirety of his being.  The kind who would not simply believe a story, but would take his place in the story, and live it from his heart.

Tragically, that kind of belief is a rare commodity these days.  Ours is a world that has lost its sense of wonder.  We live in times where to believe in anything is considered childish.  We are conditioned to doubt what can’t be seen, heard, touched, or tested.  Science, once a tool used by thinking men and women who sought to understand and marvel at God’s creation, is often wielded by skeptical reductionists who break things down to their simplest parts in order to dismiss the wonder of the whole.  Unlike the ancients, starlight holds no mystery for us (if you can even see it that is – light pollution has blinded us to its wonder).  We look at panoramic mountain vistas and talk about plate tectonics.  True enough, children still have a sense of wonder, Christmas morning is ample evidence of that, but they too are quickly conditioned to lose it in favor of a more ‘rational’ way of looking at things.  And as far as becoming part of a story bigger than us, well, who has time for that?  Our treadmill lifestyles keep us busy and preoccupied with the mundane and the trivial.  We live at such a hectic pace that we no longer have time to take Ferris Bueller’s advice to stop to look around once in a while, let alone to become part of a greater story. 

And so we lose out.  We lose out on living with a sense of wonder, and we lose out on living a life of meaning.  The beloved apostle John would only have wept, for as Albert Einstein said, ‘the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the true source of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’ 

The tragedy, I fear, is that there may be some reading this to whom such a quote applies (if so, I thank you for making it this far, and hope you will keep going).  You want to believe, you wish you could become part of a bigger story, in fact, that may be the very reason you are visiting this blog: to have belief rekindled.  But having come of age in a world without wonder, such a thing seems impossible at best and ludicrous at worst. 

But friend, it’s Christmas, and Christmas is our chance to regain a sense of wonder.   The Nativity story takes place in a time when people, in a sense, lived on the verge of disbelief.  They lived under the brutal hand of the Roman Empire, and God had seemingly been silent for centuries.  The age-old longing for the Messiah who would deliver Israel had grown a bit thin, and many at the time simply accepted that things would never change, at least not during their lifetimes.  But then the light of Christmas broke through.  Zechariah and Elizabeth discovered they would have a son in their old age.  Mary received the news that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit.  Shepherds, living at the margins of society, were invited by angels to celebrate the Messiah’s birth.  Wise men from the East, astrologers who didn’t really know Israel’s God, trusted in starlight to guide them, and found the place where life could begin again.  All of these people had been struck by the light of Christmas, and all became believers.  All became part of a story bigger than themselves. 

Wouldn’t you like to believe like that?  To wonder again, and become a part of something big? 

You can. 

Like many of you, at this time of year I read and watch many classic Christmas stories: A Christmas Carol; A Charlie Brown Christmas; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Elf.  And of course, The Polar Express, the Robert Zemeckis film based on the classic Chris Van Allsburg book.  That too has become a classic in my household. My daughter insists on watching it multiple times every year.  You may be familiar with the story, but to recap, it is the story of a boy who has lost his ability to believe in Santa, who nonetheless takes a magical journey by train to the North Pole, where he discovers a remarkable truth: ‘Sometimes seeing is believing; and sometimes, the most real things in the world are the things you can’t see.’

There is a scene in the movie that really gets to me.  The boy, standing at the center square at the North Pole alongside Elves and other children, watches the celebration begin as Santa strides forth to take the reins of his sleigh and begin his annual Christmas ride.  Alas, the boy can’t see Santa because of the crowd.  The reindeer go wild, and the chain of bells that links them together jingles with a sound that the other children adore.  But the boy, who still struggles to believe, can’t hear them.  Suddenly, one of the bells breaks from its string and bounces to his feet.  He picks it up, almost with tears in his eyes, and begins to repeat, ‘I believe, I believe, I believe.’  And as he does, he hears the bell.  Suddenly, Santa appears next to him and asks, ‘What did you say?’ and with eyes full of wonder, the boy says, ‘I believe.’  Santa goes on to give the bell to the boy as the ‘first gift of Christmas,’ and explains, with words that tell us clearly that The Polar Express really isn’t about Santa Claus, ‘This bell is a wonderful symbol of the spirit of Christmas, as am I.  The true spirit of Christmas lives in your heart.’  You see, the bell represents the boy’s newfound faith, his renewed sense of wonder, his recaptured ability to believe.  It represents that sense of wonder we long for, that ability to become part of something bigger than ourselves.  That sense of wonder the world tries to take from us, but deep down, never fully goes away. 

I love the way the story ends.  The boy, having returned home, discovers that only he and his little sister can hear the bell.  His parents, having been dulled and worn down by the cares of the world, have lost their ability to believe.  And so, with the boy jingling the bell and listening to it with his renewed sense of wonder, a voice – the voice of the boy, now an old man, says something important: ‘At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.’

So here’s the question: does the bell ring for you?  When you hear John’s words of indescribable mystery, or the story of the shepherd and the angels, or when you listen to the songs of Christmas, doesn’t your heart just ache to believe?  How wonderful then, that we have something to believe in.  How wonderful that there really is a first gift of Christmas, and it isn’t a bell from Santa’s Sleigh.  It is Jesus, the Christ, the Word made flesh, God with us, come to teach us how to live and love, to infuse us with wonder, and to make our lives part of the remarkable story he is telling.  

For those who long for something to fan the flames of faith, who ache to fill the hole in their heart, who hope to take Christmas magic back from a world that has virtually dug its grave, who yearn for a story to believe in – let the words from the theme song to The Polar Express, words that could well have been written by John himself, speak to your soul:

Believe in what your heart is saying, hear the melody that’s playing,

There’s no time to waste, there’s so much to celebrate. 

Believe in what you feel inside and give your dreams the wings to fly.

You have everything you need.  If you just believe.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Pastor Brent