March 2019
A few days
before writing this letter I fell off my garage roof. I was going to put back a slipped tile but I
badly misjudged things and came down to earth rather painfully. I now have several broken ribs and some uncomfortable
weeks ahead. As you can imagine I’ve
thought a lot about all that happened.
Here’s just a few of my thoughts:
I am foolish and
make wrong choices. And if that’s true
for my plan to fix the tile it is true in a hundred other ways in my life. Not all of my mistakes have such sudden
painful consequences but the results may be deeper.
My foolishness
hurts others. It brings tears to my eyes
now to remember how I lay on the stretcher listening to the paramedic leave a
message on my wife’s voicemail, knowing how awful it would be for her to get
that message.
How amazing our
First Responders are. I was on my own
when I fell and could only make it as far as the phone. It was
such a relief when help arrived and if
David was annoyed at me for having interrupted his decorating he certainly didn’t
show it. Thank you!
Suffering is
real. I spent 3 days in a hospital ward
full of badly injured men. The Bible tells
me to expect such places in our world – our collective rebellion against our
loving creator means that suffering is never far away – but to see it close up
is desperately sad. There were a few
like me who were recovering well but others who will always have to live with
their injuries. For some their physical
injuries were nothing compared to everything else they faced in their lives:
fractured relationships or suicidal depression.
Thank Jesus for
hospitals. They are remarkable places
staffed by people who are caring, competent and resilient. Thank you!
I don’t mean that the staff would all say that they do what they do
because of Jesus, but when you think about the cultures in our world’s history
where compassionate medical care flourished, and think about who influenced
those cultures, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion: Trace the lines back from today’s desire and
ability to heal people; so many of them go to the one who went around “healing
every kind of disease and sickness”.
Sincerely
Graham Burrows