An escape from death

I ended up in the hospital emergency room a couple of weeks ago. This time I forewent the $1,200 out-of-pocket ambulance ride of 2002 infamy and drove myself. I rather wish now I had stayed at home, for the symptoms only mimicked cardiac failure. But it was not altogether without value to inhabit for a week the perspective of someone believing she is soon to leave this world.

It is I, after all, who have been praying Psalm 90: “Teach me to number my days, that I may get a heart of wisdom.” And if it was a pricy tutorial, God is not shook up at all about the price; it’s only me.

I had the presence of mind—nausea, weakness, left arm and back ache notwithstanding—to bring along a Bible, knowing what emergency wards are like. I knew there are a few key words that are like magic at ER reception desks, like “chest pains” and “stroke,” but also that after a quick VIP escort there would be waiting in a curtained cubicle.

I decided to start with Matthew and read only the red letters, though I once disdained the practice. I had watched a dozen “one for Israel—I met Messiah” testimonies of Jews on YouTube, and most of the converts claimed that when they finally cracked a New Testament they couldn’t believe how Jewish Jesus sounded. I wanted to hear that sound.

So in my enforced captivity (and since my mobile phone had no bars) I reclined in my hospital gown and perused. Bible verses smote me afresh. Matthew 5:10: “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake.” What an odd statement and proof of hell’s power over men—the very idea that anyone would persecute someone for being good! Verse 18: “Until heaven and earth pass away,” Jesus says by way of introduction, and no one interrupts Him to say, “What! What are you talking about, man? Everyone knows this rock is solid and eternal.” They all could see back then, before Edwin Hubble, that the earth would end one day.

How does one explain the sudden expectation that one does not have another 30 years after all, but maybe 30 days? The very trees look different. They seem to pull away from you and say you don’t belong here anymore.

But what I savor is the instant fear of God that imminent mortality affords. You see acutely just how sloppy you’ve been living, what indulgence to the flesh you have allowed, all excused by saying, “I’m a sinner and can’t help it.” Now, it turns out, you may meet your Maker momentarily. Let’s see how your excuses will fly then! Will God say at your rendezvous: “I never knew you; depart from me”?

And so I made some vows about my life if He should let me live.

But then good news from the doctor: Expectations of my death are premature. Admirable EKG, probably just nerve pain, the nausea coincidental. I climb back into my street clothes and walk out into the sunshine and the very trees look different once again. It’s like the Confederate Civil War prisoner on the morning of his hanging at an Alabama gallows in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1962), when the rope somehow snaps and he plunges into the racing river rather than doing a dangling dance. And when he emerges from the water he looks around and sees the rustling leaves and hears the chirping birds, with crispness and acuteness he has never known.

The residue of a postponement at the gallows is zeal to keep those vows—a tongue controlled, a heart wide open. In this I follow the Psalmist: “I will perform my vows to you, that which my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble” (Psalm 66:13-14).

Not to be a spoiler, but the condemned man at Owl Creek, Mr. Farquhar, having swum from Union infantrymen bullets and reveling in his freedom, as he raced home to a tender Southern belle on a veranda, just before he falls in her embrace is jerked back from her arms. Next we see him dangling from the railroad bridge.

For all escapes from death are a reprieve.