Dear Friends,
On a cold but sunny winter afternoon, I was seated on a large tractor tire tube racing down a snow-covered mountain slope. The tube hit a mound and went airborne. The rider in front of me fell off.
I hung on when the tube slammed down. My neck wrenched with a crunch. I was young and laughed when the ride came to an end. But since that day, my neck clicks and pops when I tilt my head to the side.
Thirty years later, I sit still in a client’s Leadership Council on a Thursday morning. My neck is so stiff that I cannot turn it from side to side. Searing pain grips my head. I struggle to pay attention.
A MRI reveals the problem. The vertebrae in my neck are compressed and out of alignment. Sometimes, my sleeping position betrays me, or I forget and carry the forty pound briefcase by a shoulder strap and the nerves pinch and inflame in protest.
A physician prayed for me one afternoon — a prominent surgeon who professes the Word of God as his rule of life. It was a difficult day, filled with my attorney’s share of problems and conflicts. The pain was strong enough to slow and disrupt my ability to think.
At the conclusion of our meeting, he asked if he could pray for me. He offered a beautiful petition for the relief of my affliction.
The pain was gone when I raised my head. I told him so.
The surgeon startled me by protesting that he didn’t really believe that God would relieve physical symptoms through prayer alone. He begged me not to tell anyone about the prayer lest someone think he really believed in healing by faith. He was obviously distressed.
“Why did you pray for me if you didn’t believe God would really help me?” I asked.
“I was hoping you would be comforted,” he said. “It’s medicine that heals.”
“I believe that our God of love will have mercy as he wills and as he knows regardless of the instrument he uses” I said. After the surgeon left my office, I prayed for him.
My family experienced a lot of pain of the body and soul varieties. But they didn’t take it personally. My parents believed this was a fallen world, broken with sin in ways that hurt people and caused us to hurt people. They offered no illusions about that. What they offered to my siblings and me was a choice. We could try to work our way through the suffering and blame that overmatched us, or we could live by faith.
My Mom and Dad taught us God was loving and kind and wanted the best for us. Jesus gave his life for us and was resurrected by the love of the Father. By relying upon Jesus’ strength and life we would make it through our difficult days on this earth until Jesus returned to take us to heaven where we would live for eternity.
I had to work through these propositions for myself, but I came to experience God as a real being with whom I could commune in prayer. That experience is the bedrock of my life. Knowing God’s love is eternal offers a liberating future and a hope That knowledge has not spared me pain and trouble, but it makes them bearable.
Back to the Thursday morning meeting. Our chief executive officer is speaking. He is a close friend and colleague, really more of a brother. He relates his own skepticism about whether God’s hand can be seen in the occurrences of life — a skepticism fueled by college professors who cautioned him about a faith that sees God’s hand active and guiding in human affairs. They told him such a faith can start wars and justify all kinds of human mischief.
Pain and stiffness prevent me from turning my head to look at him, but I listen carefully. I studied under similar professors, but I was skeptical of their bloodless, detached assessments of the meaning of faith and the human condition. For the most part, I preferred reading for myself to listening to lectures. Blessedly another gift of my parents was, “Kent, look into things and decide for yourself what you believe. Don’t take someone’s word for it.” This helped me filter out the professors’ faithless moralizing.
A tragic accident my junior year of college forced me to a decision about faith. Where did God figure into my suffering and loss? A former teacher sent me a copy of a classic book on human sorrow, A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. Reading Lewis’ account of grappling with his wife’s cancer and death confirmed I was not alone in the darkness.
Lewis described grieving as a process of learning what is real and what is false in our understanding of God. He wrote, “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”
Well, I trusted the rope of faith with my full weight and it held for me. I grasped it and pulled myself hand over hand back into the land of the living. My reliance on God has grown in the years since.
What challenged our CEO’s questions about the efficacy of prayer is a dire “Red Sea” dilemma. State law requires that we rebuild our facilities in the next four years for reasons of seismic safety but we have a dearth of financial resources to accomplish the task. This leaves us with a stark choice — rebuild or leave the operation upon which an entire region depends for healthcare. Our need is real, but its achievement was being blocked by circumstances impossible to overcome in the collective judgment of our team and consultants.
Those who lead the organization believe that we are called by Christ to a mission of teaching and healing in his name. We love him and his service and so we brought our challenge to him in prayer. This is the richest spiritual time in my thirty-seven years of representing Christians and their causes. We pray as a team together and individually night and day in a spontaneous and unstructured manner. We pray in supplication and we pray in thanksgiving. It really is a revival.
A series of seemingly impossible things happened in a short period of time — things that experts said wouldn’t or couldn’t occur. Recalcitrant government agencies took action, disputes were resolved, negotiations concluded and contracts signed, for the most part on the very day they were needed. Finally, a sale of tax-exempt bonds was so successful that we had five buyers for every bond and the resulting interest rate was astoundingly favorable.
The CEO tells the group that nothing else could explain the events but God’s provision. He is awed and humbled by the transforming blessing of God as are we all. My own gratitude is more powerful than my neck pain. And every one of us present would say our true blessing is our renewed relationships with God and with each other.
Our community is experiencing collaboration and mutual encouragement that gives life to David’s words, “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:11-14).
This is a tough world and there is no human way to make it easier. When Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” he was telling us that he is the answer and he is enough (John 16:33).
There is a saying, “Faith is not about everything turning out okay. Faith is about being okay no matter how things turn out.” This is the truth for those who accept God as their life, rather than demanding him to fix their lives so they can remain in control. It is true for those suffering disabling pain and it is true for communities of faith fighting for their corporate existence and mission. I am happy and blessed that it’s my truth on this Thursday morning.
“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).
Under the mercy of Christ,
Kent
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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.
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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.
Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.