“THE SHOCK OF LIFE”

  

Yes, I know I missed last issue again. Will my excuse of stopping breathing (temporarily, of course) on 21 Oct 2015 do? I collapsed upon my couch at home early that afternoon and awoke to find 5 pairs of eyes staring intently at me before I was briskly carted off to Royal North Shore Hospital in an ambulance. On the way in, I was told that my son had performed CPR on my by then bruised chest and so enabled my life story to continue. Otherwise I might never have known about the condition of aortic stenosis, often described in medical circles as the silent killer.

Open-heart surgery was prescribed and performed so that the clogged valve could be replaced into my heart by one from an unwittingly generous animal. I can now be identified by a thin red line down the front to match the yellow streak down my back. Three months after hospitilisation, I have been brought home to complete my recovery. My thanks to so many of you for your prayers and kind attention all of which has surely helped my healing process.

I never knew how easily and so quickly and quietly life can end. The difficult bit happens as one experiences the shock of life with the slow and challenging journey to recovery to live the life so graciously extended for me. Innumerable angels in many guises have appeared before me upon whom I have depended to help me recover. Those words, “No man [sic] is an island” thudded back into me, day by day.

We are beginning a new year. Epiphany comes to us in many ways and the best gift the wise men (and women) can bring to us is the wisdom accumulated from the experience of life. There is much stupidity and cruelty within this world so that we are left wondering how on earth we can ever change it. Like a “brand plucked from the burning” (Amos 4:11) – words quoted by Susannah Wesley when her 5 year old son, John, was rescued from the burning rectory at Epworth – we have been given the opportunity to do so and to ensure we leave the spirit behind us to those left to take up the challenge.

Epiphany with Lent about to come brings again to our attention the person of Jesus, hastily delivered from the sword of the soldiers of Herod the Great to put his own life on the line in his own time that we may live lives freed from the greed and violence that destroys so many. Yes, we too can be shocked into life that we may continue to follow Jesus on his journey so that lives may be lived in all fullness.