We live in the Shadowlands.
David Robertson
(Scottish Pastor David Robertson of The Wee Flea fame)
I don’t think David will mind, but I’d like to share an overview from a recent post
offered from his Wee Flea blog…
Well, it’s actually a revisiting of sorts…an offering of a re-visit to an older post offered
when recently posting a video for SOLAS (Solas Centre for Public Christianity based in Scotland)
answering the question “Where is God When It Hurts?”
It’s been about 5 years since I started this little blog of mine and in turn,
it’s been just a few short years now that I “found” David Roberston.
When I started following David’s blog, The Wee Flea.
I can’t actually remember how I found David or his blog, but I think it most likely came
from one of the ‘random’ Word Press crossmatching of like-minded words picked out from
one of my posts.
Of which probably had something to do with Evolution vs Creationism since David wrote the
popular book refuting Richard Dawkin’s and his atheistic approach to evolution with the book
The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths
Curious I obviously clicked, read, liked and followed…and I’ve never looked back.
A born and bred Episcopalian /Anglican who sounds the praises of a Scottish Free Chruch Presbyterian.
Given the fact that I often share what I glean from David’s writings,
it might seem a bit odd that I would offer a disclaimer before sharing again…
but this posting of David’s is very personal.
It’s a story that I did not know and it is a powerful testimony to life, death, and faith.
So I’ve decided that this post is really going to be a Part 1.
In part, because David’s words reminded me of something I needed to do…
something I need to ask all of you…but my asking will wait…it will be Part 2…
but it is about a concentrated time for a joint prayer
But for now, we will concentrate on
Shadowlands…
David stated that we are living in the Shadowlands.
One of my all-time favorite movies is Shadowlands…the 1993 movie starring Sir Anthony Hopkins as
C.S. Lewis and his relationship with American poet Joy Davidman (played by Debra Winger)—
a story about their friendship, eventual marriage of convenience, a belated courtship, a budding love
all of which was crushed by her untimely death from cancer…
all of which sent Lewis on a spiral of faith.
Shadowlands…according to Merriam Webster, “the realm peopled by shadows or submerged in shadow:
such as
a : the abode of spirits or phantoms”
A place that rests between dark and light.
The place we, the children of God, currently live…
a place in between both Heaven and Hell.
A place our friend the Wee Flea journeyed through more closely than most…
In a post offered on January 1, 2015, David shared the story of a major health scare
suffered in 2011.
His story began a bit backward…he was sitting in an airport preparing to fly to
Kuala Lumpur, then off to Australia.
He recalled the lost Air Asia flight lost in the waters off the coast of Malaysia–
a thought that reminded him of his fear of flying.
A fear of both life and death…a fear most of us share.
David’s thoughts raced to another time, a time when he was attending a conference in the
northern British town of Thurso. A time when a scientist attending the same conference told
David, just before David was to deliver a talk, that he did not believe in God…in part
because he had never met a person who was ever healed by prayer.
David relates that when that statement was uttered, he actually tore up his prewritten speech
and decided to share his own true life to death story.
I’ve linked the full post at the bottom of this post…
David’s tale begins one October in 2011 just following a wedding he had officiated.
Following the wedding, he was not feeling particularly well so he asked his
wife to drive him home.
Yet annoyingly his son had realized he’d left his phone back at the church so….
they turned around and went back to the church.
David, upon getting out of the car, suddenly collapsed in a pool of blood.
It was later discovered that David had two bleeding ulcers with one right over a major artery.
In other words, David was quickly bleeding out.
By Divine Providence, having returned back to the Chruch had placed David right near the hospital.
Had this happened by the time they’d gotten home…David would have bled out and died.
His tale is lengthy as it is a harrowing time of balancing a tight rope between both life and death.
Several times the doctors told his wife that David may or may not make it…
with a disclaimer that if he did survive, he might be severely brain damaged or permanently
physically impaired.
He had but a 50 / 50 chance of survival.
50% chance to live or 50% chance to die—
Ottimista vs Pessimista
He was in a medically induced coma.
He incurred e-coli of the lungs.
He incurred a deadly strain of pneumonia.
In an attempt to protect the brain from extreme blood loss, David was given heavy psychotic drugs.
He was delusional.
He often trudged through the dark night of the soul,
days where he found himself unable to pray.
Each time they thought a ray of light was beginning to shine, David’s health fell drastically backward.
Things did not look good for David’s survival.
And so David shares that his church sent out a request…
The Free Church clerk of Assembly then sent out this e-mail to all our churches –
In the light of the most recent posts regarding the serious and worsening physical condition
of Rev. David Robertson, a request has been made that the whole church pray earnestly to God
on David’s behalf at the same time on this coming Lord’s Day at 10.30am or 12 noon
(this would embrace churches that start at 10.30am, 11am and at 12 noon).
Along with him being a family man, our brother in Christ and a loyal servant of the Free Church,
we also appreciate the intense role he has been fulfilling as an effective defender of the
Christian faith in our secular society.
Please pray for David, for his healing,
his family and his church.
Pray that God will be glorified in and through this dark experience that
we are facing as a church.
The churches responded.
You can call it coincidence.
But from that weekend on I began to get better.
How one interprets that will depends on your pre-suppositions.
The non-theist will just simply state it was the doctors and the science
(perhaps with a bit of luck) which healed you.
At least some of the professionals involved disagree.
After getting out of hospital when I phoned my surgeon [*a Muslim]
to ask him if he would be willing to come to a thanksgiving service,
his wife said ‘of course’.
I told her that she had made my day because her husband had saved my life.
Her reply?
“That’s not what he says.
He says there was nothing he could do and that it was God who intervened”.
One of the major problems that so many people have,
Christians and non-Christians alike, is that they do not grasp what faith is.
I’m sure there are people who think my story is that I, or others,
had enough faith and therefore God rewarded that and healed me.
X hours of prayer equals Y healings.
That is not how the God of the Bible works.
And that is not faith. It’s also why prayer is not open to laboratory experiments.
The best example of what real biblical faith is came from my son, Andrew.
One day he came home from the hospital and wrote the following Facebook post:
An update on Dad:
There hasn’t been much said in the past few days because things haven’t been going well.
His sedation was increased on Sunday and they’ve had him asleep since then.
The damage to his lungs is still severe and today mum was told by the doctors that it’s 50/50
whether he’ll live or die.
I write this with great anguish and a heavy heart but not without hope.
There is still a hope that he’ll make it through this,
but there is a better hope he has and we have. A hope that does not waver and is 100% certain.
That is the hope of eternal salvation through Jesus Christ.
Jesus has already removed Dad’s biggest problem,
it’s not the deterioration of his lungs but something more deadly… his sin.
Christ has saved him from that. Tomorrow I go down with Becky to Dundee,
knowing that this may be the last time I see my Dad…
till Christ returns and “everything sad is made untrue.”
1 Thessalonians 4:13-14
At the Thurso conference mentioned above I finished off my story by telling them of my son’s words.
The scientist responded “but that’s not fair.
If God heals you that is an answer to prayer and if he did not heal you that is an answer too.
That means God wins every time”.
He was so right.
Of course God wins.
Before I knew it in my mind, now I KNOW it in my heart.
David continues about his life and his mission following this brush with death…
The Word of God is my meat, drink and medicine.
That by the way is why I am so strong in defending it –
especially from those Christians who thinking that they are making it more palatable,
water it down and distort it, in order to ‘reach’ the modern generation.
No. Just as I fight the ‘traditionalists’ who want to imprison Christ in an idealised box of
their own making, so I will fight to the end those who distort the Word of God and thus
take away from the beauty and glory of Christ.
Whether it is ‘conservatives’ adding to the Word of God, or ‘liberals’ taking away from it,
to me makes no difference. They are both poisoners of the pure word.
And I plead with the Lord that he will never allow me to use deception or distort the Word of God.
I am also determined to continue my battle against the increasing secularisation of our society.
Not because the secularists attack the Word of God and mock Jesus –
what else can you expect non-believers to do? ‘Liberal’ Christians damage the Word of God.
Atheist and secularist philosophies damage those made in the image of God – all human beings.
As GK Chesterton pointed out, once you cease to believe in God, you also cease to believe in humanity.
I am a committed anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian and I believe that no matter the ‘nice’ words said,
if our society moves away from its traditional Christian roots,
then we will end up with an increasingly illiberal, confused and authoritarian society.
I won’t keep silent.
Please read the full harrowing and triumphant tale here:
Tomorrow I will offer Part 2—my part..the part that David’s story proved to be an
exclamation point reminding me of something most important we need to be doing.
cookiecrumbstoliveby 