The Prodigal Redux: Part I

Signs and Wonders, a biblical expression for miracles. Nothing short of a miracle has happened recently in my life. I'm not talking about the miracle of me still being alive after my accident in 2020. No no! What I am talking about is a much more recent miracle of a prayer being answered. An answer that finally makes sense of my near-death experience.

Unlike most stories that start at the beginning, I'm going to start this story in the middle, or rather roughly 3/4 of the way through. I'll get to the beginning later. I've written about my near-death experience in previous blog posts. I won't rehash that story here. I spent four months bedridden after the accident. Even after that, I was under orders for a lot of bed rest outside of the PT that was helping me learn to walk again. That's a whole lot of time to ponder what I had experienced while I was dead and what it might mean for my life going forward.

I did not just ponder. I had experienced the afterlife; it was nothing short of heavenly. Profound joy and peace beyond description. The kind of joy and peace you can only experience when you finally come home to God. He was there, all around me and in my heart, a warmth that bathed me and radiated from me at the same time. Sure, there was the mountain paradise that I've described previously, but there was no doubting that God dwelt in those mountains – dwells in those mountains of heaven.

I had no doubt that it had been a spiritual experience. Neuroscientists talk about near-death experiences being nothing more than a brain dying. This was not that. I was somewhere I had never been, not even in my wildest dreams. And yet, my family was there, those who had gone before me – mom, dad, my brother, and my oldest sister. There is no way I can imagine that my dying brain could have concocted such imagery.

So I have a spirit. That was something that my rational mind concluded was not the case before my accident. I wasn't an atheist. Possibly agnostic. I never gave it much thought. I was wishy-washy on the matter, but I believe that, at best, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Now that I knew that I have a spirit, now that I had experienced something divine, what was I supposed to do with that?

My worldview had been turned upside down.

I had nothing but time to think about it. While laying in a hospital bed for months, I had a few options: I could watch TV – too much about people dying from Covid on CNN or History Channel repeats; I could read once I was given an iPad on loan; I could stare at the walls, or I could figure out a way to be productive. I was going stir crazy. I decided to start journaling as well as work on a memoir of my experience. I thought that writing could help me make sense of it all. I needed to get what was in me out of me.

And I reached out in prayer to the best of my ability. Because I knew from my experience that God exists, I prayed for guidance. I did not know if I was going to be able to live independently, let alone what I might do to support myself now that half of my body did not work. It is an understatement to say that I was worried about my future. I believe that I have a spirit, now what?

This will sound silly, but I thought in terms of Star Wars: okay, so the Force exists. I'm a Jedi, but what path must I follow? What is my destiny?

I prayed and meditated about this for nearly 4 years. This is where I should probably take you back close to the beginning of my life. At least it feels like it – it was so long ago. Over 40 years ago, I was a teenager in high school lacking direction, just as I was lacking direction post-accident in my late 50s. I had been christened in the United Methodist Church, and it was in that church that I was raised. Like a lot of teenagers, I became sullen and stopped going to church. Church was a drag. Or so I thought for several years.

Then something compelled me at the time to drive up the street to a Christian bookstore, seeking answers to questions I did not even know I'd had. I did not understand what compelled me at the time, but I know now that it was God calling me to find the answers at that bookstore. There were a lot of books by people like Billy Graham, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker, and Kenneth Copeland. Regardless of the scandals that would eventually plague some of those evangelists, those were the big names at the time in Christianity.

There were books called concordances, whatever those were. Remember, I was a naïve teen looking for direction. I felt stupid about it but decided to walk up to the counter and ask the proprietor for a book that had the answers. I remember that he asked what my questions were. I hadn't really thought about it but probably spewed out something like how did the universe start? Why are we here?

Stupid, right? Or profound, depending on your perspective. I barely remembered my Sunday school lessons about things like disciples, apostles, David and Goliath, Moses and the Exodus… I did not remember those things at that time. The proprietor – I forget his name – said I should probably start with the Bible.

Well, duh! Occam's razor – the simplest solution is usually the right one. Boil it down to essentials. He told me that, if I was a serious seeker of answers, I should probably invest in a study Bible. Tyndale Bible. MacArthur Bible. Thompson chain-reference Bible…

Decisions! Decisions!

I thumbed through the various options and was attracted to the layout and complexity of the Thompson chain-reference style. I've always been one to bite off more than I can chew, and that Bible was definitely that. It was a burgundy leather bound beauty, and getting my name embossed on the cover was included in the price. How much? $30, or somewhere in that neighborhood as I remember.

That was more than I planned to spend, but it was a beauty of a book. King James version: thees and thous, verily I say unto you… Yeah, that KJV. I did not know how to pray at the time. I was prone to rash decisions, but this one did not feel rash. This decision felt right.

I bought it and took it home. When I told my mother, she was overjoyed. And surprised; her “little boy” had taken it upon himself to buy a quality, leather-bound Bible.

I took it upstairs to my room and figured that the best place to start was on page 1, Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Okay, now I'm getting somewhere, I said to myself. I knew about the Lord's prayer. I thought that was something you only say in church. I didn't know anything about praying, so I did the best I could, “Dear God…”

I was praying for answers.

I was praying for direction.

Several months later, my best buddy and I were downtown yet again to watch the coeds on campus. Just across the street from campus, at the corner of State Street and Huron, stood the edifice of the First United Methodist Church of Ann Arbor. My buddy had to get going and took off on his bike. There were still a few hours of afternoon left. I didn't have to be home until dinner. Something compelled me to go over to that church. Maybe the answers were there. Other than the big questions like why are we here and how did the universe come into being, I felt like I had other questions that I hadn't even discovered yet.

I entered the church – doors were nearly always open – and made my way to the back of the sanctuary where the administrative offices and meeting rooms are. While I did have questions, I didn't really know why I was there. I wasn't sure who I should talk to. Probably the minister, who, as luck would have it, was in his office. I knocked on his open door jamb, and he invited me in. I decided I did not want to ask him the big questions. I felt like they were stupid questions to ask. My problem had always been not asking the right questions. The only question I did ask him was how does one become a minister of a church.

First United Methodist Church is in the middle of Ann Arbor, MI, a bastion of intellectualism. The Academy. He told me about his own path to the office he now held, which was four years at a seminary school, then a graduate degree in biblical studies, and finally, a doctorate in ministry. 7 to 8 years of higher education. What?! Well that was discouraging.

There are a couple of other points of clarification that I should make about those early days of decision-making. I was an average student. I could've excelled if I applied myself, but there were movies and TV, hanging out on campus downtown, girl watching with my buddy. Lots of distractions. I had aspirations to fly jets for the Air Force. As early as seventh grade I thought that I was destined for the Air Force Academy. Fat chance with my grades.

I was at a loss for were I would be headed after I graduated from high school. On a whim, my buddy talked me into considering enlisting in the Army, because that was what he was going to do. We took the ASVAB, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The test was common sense to me, and I scored well. Well enough that the Army recruiter was eager to snatch me up and talk me into being a helicopter mechanic. I wanted to fly jets, I didn't see how being a helicopter mechanic would get me there. The recruiter told me that I could eventually become a warrant officer to fly choppers. Not.

I took my test scores down the hallway to the Air Force recruiter to find out what I might be able to do. I knew I needed a college degree to fly jets, but I did not feel that I was ready for college. If I couldn't go to the Air Force Academy with the grades that I had, I did not want college at all. Logical, right? Riiight! The Air Force recruiter was happy to snatch me from the jaws of his army competitor. Long story short, I enlisted in the United States Air Force delayed entry program. That would allow me to finish my high school education, enjoy the summer with friends, and enter basic training the following fall. Future secured!

Flash forward a year, and I was sitting alone in an empty military dormitory room, nothing but the contents of a duffel bag with me. I had just arrived at the first station of my tour of duty: Fairchild Air Force Base, outside of Spokane, WA. I was a newly trained aircraft weapons and systems specialist, assigned to the 92nd bombardment waiting of the Strategic Air Command.

I had neglected to bring any books with me, not even my precious leather-bound Bible. No TV, no books, no friends. This was the early ‘80s, 2+ decades before reliable cellular phones. I won't lie; I was feeling lost and lonely. Although there were two twin beds in the room, I was not assigned a roommate. There was a common room with a pool table, but it was usually empty because there weren't many people in the dormitory. It was used for transits inbound and outbound from base.

Thoroughly bored, counting ceiling tiles while waiting for the chow hall to open for dinner, I snooped. There was a nightstand next to the bed with the drawer. In the drawer there was this small booklet that I would later learn is called a religious tract. It was a comic book published by Chick publications. I don't remember what the story of the comic was about, but I do remember that at the end of it, the story talked about something I had never heard before. It was the story of developing a personal relationship with God by inviting Christ Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior.

How had I never heard about this? Out of all those years attending church, there was never a mention of a personal relationship with God. With this new? Was this even possible?

Have you ever heard of a foxhole conversion? It's when a soldier is dug into a foxhole under heavy enemy fire or artillery shelling, praying for sweet Jesus to save him and get him home safely. My conversion wasn't quite foxhole, but I was a 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school, 2000 miles from home and assigned to my first station of duty to begin working on weapons of mass destruction. This was at the height of the Cold War, and the threat of war with the Soviet Union lingered like a bad feeling in the pit of your stomach. The good news was that, if nuclear war did break out, my base would be one of the first targets. I'd be dead before I knew it hit me. A brilliant flash hotter than the surface of the sun, and I'm vapor. This reality nagged and isolated me.

That was the incubator in which my conversion to Christ began and started to grow. I got down on my knees beside my bed. That's what you do when you pray, right? You get down on your knees, and you pray. It was a simple prayer, the wording of which has faded over the decades. The gist of it was that I asked Jesus into my heart as my Lord and Savior. Just like the religious tract said.

The effect was subtle but certain – I felt warmth. I felt peace. I felt joy. Almost instantly, my mind was at ease. I didn't realize it until later, but that had been the point at which the seed of God's Holy Spirit was planted in my heart by the sacrifice of Christ Jesus on the cross.

That seed would eventually grow into a beautiful shade tree of hope and salvation that I was to nurture for years to come.

More on that in my next post!

Thank you for reading. Peace and joy to you.