I heard Ravi Zacharias, one man of God whom I greatly esteem in the faith, once give the example of a young child taken into a doctor’s office by his mother to be given a shot by a physician.
He imagined the boy saying, “Why has she led me to this place, into this building, where I am going to be poked with a needle? Doesn’t she love me?”
This, he used as a metaphor to show where the Lord sometimes leads us for our own good. What if we were that child and that experience had to be explained to us? We too would ask, “Why lead me here, Lord?”
Here’s another story he shared --the agony he suffered following back surgery. The surgeon had to embed two titanium rods and demanded his patient lie still, on his back, for four months.
The surgeon permitted him to be moved on occasion for a brief time to help prevent bed sores. During one of these episodes he asked to be repositioned when in the door walked two large men who placed a sheet under him and rolled him to his side for a short time.
Late one night, Ravi pleaded to a nurse to again be repositioned. She insisted she knew how to move him by herself without the help of another person, yet Ravi adamantly maintained that it should be done by two men. Still, she persisted to say she knew what she was doing, so he gave in.
Immediately, the nurse ran her hands underneath Ravi’s back, which caused him to scream. She responded, “Oh you’ve had back surgery. I thought you came for a hip replacement.”
The next day he told the surgeon what happened the previous night. The surgeon stormed out of that room to berate the nursing staff.
All this, Ravi spoke, on the topic of suffering. I think his talks are so well implanted with real life experiences. One of the morals he gave at the end was, “You touch a healing wound in a wrong way and you may do greater damage.”
He imagined the boy saying, “Why has she led me to this place, into this building, where I am going to be poked with a needle? Doesn’t she love me?”
This, he used as a metaphor to show where the Lord sometimes leads us for our own good. What if we were that child and that experience had to be explained to us? We too would ask, “Why lead me here, Lord?”
Here’s another story he shared --the agony he suffered following back surgery. The surgeon had to embed two titanium rods and demanded his patient lie still, on his back, for four months.
The surgeon permitted him to be moved on occasion for a brief time to help prevent bed sores. During one of these episodes he asked to be repositioned when in the door walked two large men who placed a sheet under him and rolled him to his side for a short time.
Late one night, Ravi pleaded to a nurse to again be repositioned. She insisted she knew how to move him by herself without the help of another person, yet Ravi adamantly maintained that it should be done by two men. Still, she persisted to say she knew what she was doing, so he gave in.
Immediately, the nurse ran her hands underneath Ravi’s back, which caused him to scream. She responded, “Oh you’ve had back surgery. I thought you came for a hip replacement.”
The next day he told the surgeon what happened the previous night. The surgeon stormed out of that room to berate the nursing staff.
All this, Ravi spoke, on the topic of suffering. I think his talks are so well implanted with real life experiences. One of the morals he gave at the end was, “You touch a healing wound in a wrong way and you may do greater damage.”
