In 2002, I was celebrating with a friend for his birthday. I was underage at the time, so I got one of the older guys some money to get me a bottle of Evan Williams Tennessee whiskey. By this time in my life, I definitely had a problem with drinking, but didn't think so. When the whiskey arrived, I found a glass and began pouring shots for myself. Shot after shot for two hours left me in a state of dizziness and the world spun around as if I was on a merry-go-round. That was only the beginning of the night, as we were all "preparing" for the night out on the town. What I didn't know was that everyone else was drinking moderately. They were literally having a couple drinks before going to the bar. Having a couple just doesn't work for me though. I take it to the edge every time. Before we even got into the vehicles, I stumbled and swayed my way and had to be assisted.
When we arrived at the bar, I fell out of the truck. Some guys helped me out, and aided me inside where, I fell once again into a pool table. Luckily, the bar owner asked the guys to get me out of there not long after we entered. So, a couple Good Samaritans in the group loaded me back into the truck and took me home. Knowing that my parents were asleep, and were not okay with alcoholic consumption of a minor, much less their son being the minor, the two friends perched me on the porch for the night.
Sometime during the night, my parents woke up and found me cuddled up in front of the door. They couldn't wake me up, so they dragged me inside with the help of my brother. Shortly after, alcoholic seizures began and they immediately hauled me to the car for a trip to the emergency room. As my parents sit beside my hospital bed, doctors used charcoal to get the poison out of my body. They prayed for me as I lay there unconscious, hoping that God would deliver me from the mess I was in. My blood alcohol content was .43, of which symptoms include: a general lack of behavior, unconsciousness, impaired breathing, impaired heart rate, and visible jerkiness in eye movement. Death is possible at a BAC between .30 and .39. I was lifeless.
In today's passage for Lent, we're told about a court official who hears that Jesus is in Galilee. His son is on his deathbed, and the official has heard stories about what Jesus did over the Passover feast. It's a shot in the dark for the guy, but he's willing to travel miles to find Jesus and ask him to do something. When he finds Jesus, he says, "My son is sick. Can you come and heal him?"
Jesus responds, "You Galileans . . . you have to see a dazzling miracle in order to believe." He puts him off.
The official won't have it though. He insists, "My son is on his deathbed! You have to do something!"
Then Jesus says, "Go home. Your son lives."
On the way back home, the servants of the official intercept him on the road to announce, "Your son is living!"
The official asks them, "What time did it happen?"
The servants say, "Yesterday at one o' clock." The official knows in his heart that Jesus said his son lived at one o' clock. After making the connection, he believed. In fact, when he got home he shared his findings with the household, and they all believed.
I'm sure at some point in the early morning hours in the hospital, after my parents had to sit through the agony of watching the doctors frantically do whatever they could to bring me back to life, the head doctor came up to them and said, "Your son is going to live." Throughout it all, they prayed and pleaded with God to keep me alive. They believed that God could. When I came to, the doctor told me what my BAC level had been, and said that I was very lucky to be alive.
I'm sure that from that point on, my parents had a new insight into prayer that they had never had before. When they saw my eyes open and my vitals go back to normal, they believed that there was a God who was intricately connected and concerned for human life. They didn't see Jesus lay a hand on my forehead or breathe air into my lungs, but believed that God could heal me.
Just like this court official, whose son was in a different geographical place than Jesus at the time of his healing, my parents couldn't actually see the step-by-step process of the divine. They could only believe. The truth was, I went from death to life. The belief was that God was responsible for it.
Most of my life, I've thought that believing in God requires an experience of my senses. Rather, belief consists of what I cannot see or touch. In this case, my parents accepted what they could see. They saw their son full of alcoholic poison and unconscious. That was the truth. They couldn't see or hear God, and they believed that God could work in the situation.
As we go out today, may we believe that God restoring the world and its people.
As we touch and see our own brokenness and the brokenness around us, may we believe that God does not let people stay broken.
What can we do today to touch what's broken?
What can we do today to help increase our belief in a God who restores?
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