The Promise in Pain

By Gary Lewis

In 2021, the year of my accident, 966 bicyclists died in crashes with motor vehicles in the United States—a slight increase over the 948 fatalities recorded during the pandemic season of 2020. ¶ Of course, the day I wound up in the hospital feeling dazed with multiple injuries and tried to fathom what had just happened to me, such statistics were vague, meaningless minutiae. I didn’t care about the national trend toward more bicycle paths and pedestrian safety, nor the push to increase mass transit usage so there are fewer vehicles on our highways.

I was hurting. A careless driver—whether sober, impaired or distracted by their cell phone—had smashed into me from behind, literally breaking my bike in half. I’m not sure how long I lay there, but I’m thankful somebody stopped to help. If he hadn’t, I might have joined that year’s fatality statistics.

After getting hit, I don’t remember anything until I woke up in a pickup truck, wondering why empty cans and other trash were strewn around the floor. Since I didn’t have my senses about me, I didn’t know what was going on. When I asked what had happened, the driver replied, “You’ve been hit.”

“Where are you taking me?” I asked.

“I was going to take you to the hospital.”

“No, don’t take me to the hospital,” I said, shaking my head. “Just take me to my house. I live close to here.”

Although I don’t recall much from that morning, I remember asking, “Is my bike messed up?” and his answer: “Your rim was bent a little bit.”

A little bit? My bike was broken in half, with the back smashed and part of it broken off from the frame! I thought my tire looked like a crushed aluminum ball.

Only about a mile from our house at that point, I directed him through several turns until he pulled into our driveway. The only reason I remember I had ridden in a pickup truck is the driver had thrown my bicycle in the truck’s bed.

“If you remember where I got hit, I don’t have my phone,” I said.

“I’ll get your phone for you,” he said with a wave of one hand. “Don’t worry about that.”

After leaving my bike lying in the middle of my garage, he drove away. I never saw him again. He never retrieved my phone and never checked back to see how I had fared after the accident.

PICTURE OF PANIC

Of course, when I walked through the door with a torn shirt, road rash down my right side and blood splattered across my body, my wife reacted as you might expect

“We’ve got to go to the hospital right now!” Lori yelled. “I’m calling an ambulance!”

To add to the picture of complete shock, Lori didn’t even know I had gone for an early-morning ride that Saturday. She had gotten up, headed downstairs to brew a cup of coffee and started her morning with a devotion. Imagine a picture-perfect Saturday morning, and the next thing you know, your husband is standing there bruised and bloody as he says, “I got hit by a car.”

After her frantic reaction, I replied, “No, I don’t need an ambulance. I just need to wash my face and get cleaned up.”

Lori guided me toward the car. Gesturing with my hand at the bike, I said, “Look at my bike. They destroyed my bike.”

“I don’t care about your bike!” she said, shaking her head. “Get in the car!”

In the spring of 2021, COVID-19 protocols were still in place, so when we reached the hospital, we had to first enter a tent in the parking lot for preliminary screening.

“If this was a hit-and-run, I’ve got to notify the police,” the nurse said.

Suddenly, with the initial rush of adrenaline subsiding and every ounce of energy draining from my body, I interrupted the nurse to say: “I’m getting ready to pass out.”

The woman quickly stood up and rolled her chair around the table for me to sit down. Orderlies brought a gurney and placed a neck brace on me before wheeling me inside.

After doing an MRI, they brought me back to the emergency room. Finally, a doctor came to the waiting area where I was resting. He told me I had suffered too much trauma for their small-town hospital to adequately treat my injuries.

“We’re going to have to send you to the trauma center,” he said, referring to a hospital just over 100 miles to the north. “If it were just one thing, we might be able to deal with it here. I’m most concerned about your back being broken. I think you have a small puncture in your lung and might have a lacerated liver, too.”

After listing a few other issues, he added, “I think it’s too much for us.”

I had to admit: I was a mess. I had blacked out after getting hit so hard that it broke my helmet. For the next three weeks, I would periodically see little black dots dancing in front of my eyes. One of the doctors who treated me explained that head trauma builds up fluid behind the eyes, the source of those relentless dots.

GOOD SAMARITAN?

Before the drive to the trauma center, a police officer showed up to take my statement. After I related the whole story, he asked, “Do you think the guy who picked you up is the guy who hit you?”

“Probably,” Lori interjected. “For one, why didn’t he call 911? Common sense would dictate you don’t move a body at the scene of an accident. If this guy had picked him up out of the goodness of his heart, he would have taken Gary to the hospital or stayed at the house to make sure he was OK, not just left the bike in the garage and driven off.”

“We’ll probably never find him,” the officer said. “An isolated road like that and no witnesses or security cameras? Not likely.”

In the months that followed, several friends asked if there were any security cameras in the area or at our house that might have captured an image of the motorist who ferried me home. But there weren’t any. Whether the man had a warrant out for his arrest, was afraid we might sue him or didn’t have any insurance, we’ll never know. But we are still thankful that he didn’t leave me out there on that country road. I would never have made it those last three miles with my injuries and my bike destroyed.

FACING OBSTACLES

That discussion and my reaction are part of the hindsight of my accident. On that Saturday—just like that—I found myself in the turbulence and shear of a storm, not knowing what was going to happen next. The chaos broke my body, stirred up countless questions in my mind and sent fear coursing through my veins.

How will Lori manage? How will our children react when they find out what happened? The grandchildren? Will I need surgery? Am I going to recover? How much pain will I have to endure? Where was God in all this? Didn’t He know this was my first day of riding practice for the year as I prepared for the next Ride 4 Missions? Is this how my efforts to help His work get rewarded?

I don’t know why bad things happen to God’s people, or to anyone for that matter. But of this much, I am sure: sooner or later in life, we will all face obstacles. The toughest ones can look like trying to scale Mount Everest. We can find ourselves suddenly battling fear, guilt and taunts from the devil, who is always trying to convince us that an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-loving God just doesn’t love us. Satan may sneer, “God doesn’t really care. If He did, would He have let this happen?”

Vicious, nasty, dark clouds of despair can overwhelm us without a second’s warning. That’s exactly what happened to me on that pleasant Saturday morning when I had no idea I was about to ride into a storm that would change my life forever. As the cobwebs cleared from my mind once we reached the trauma center, it caused me to reflect on the suffering of Job on the day his children were enjoying a feast at their oldest brother’s house. Then, like a tornado that swirls over the horizon, a succession of messengers brought Job the worst possible news about them:

The first told him an enemy had attacked, killed some servants and made off with the oxen and donkeys. The second said the fire of God had fallen from the heavens and burned up the sheep and other servants, and he alone had escaped to relay the news. The third brought word that other enemies had formed three raiding parties to swoop down, steal the camels and put other servants to the sword.

Finally came the revelation that turned Job’s stomach into a churning mess. While his sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine, a mighty wind had swept in from the desert and struck the oldest brother’s house. The four corners had collapsed and killed all of them, with only the messenger surviving to tell about the disaster (see Job 1:13-19 for full details).

One danger of casual Bible reading is missing the full picture of what happened to the characters in Scripture, regardless of the person. Sometimes, we treat Job’s anguish with a shorthand version of reality. You know: “Poor Job, he lost some of his possessions and really had it hard.” But let the details of that awful day sink deep into your spirit. Job had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys and numerous servants. Plus, his pride and joy: seven sons and three daughters. And just like that, he lost it all.

Anyone who has suffered through the death of a single child knows the awful, sinking feeling of agony and dismay that overwhelms any parent. The kind that leaves them gasping for air and asking the universal question, “Why did this have to happen to me?”

Once you better understand the magnitude of Job’s multiple losses, you may better appreciate his reaction to the parade of bad news messengers: “Then Job arose, tore his robe, and shaved his head; and he fell to the ground and worshiped. And he said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong” (Job 1:20-22).

Job didn’t allow the storm to steal his hope. Every storm brings with it a spiritual battle, a clash where faith struggles to prevail over fear, and praise fights to drown out pain. Hope wrestles with helplessness. Love struggles to overcome loneliness.

Only when we are equipped with vision and faith can we say as Paul did: “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:57-58).

MORE SUFFERING

But Job’s suffering doesn’t end there. Chapter 2 describes Satan (and remember, God permitted Satan to do this) afflicting Job with painful sores “from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (v. 7). Imagine that: suffering so bad you sit with a shard of broken pottery and scrape yourself with it while sitting in an ash heap as your spouse tells you to curse God and die.

If that weren’t bad enough, Job has to endure the insults of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, who say in effect, “What have you done wrong, buddy? Why have you sinned and brought this curse on yourself?” There’s a reason similar second-guessers today carry the label “Job’s Friends.” And yet, after this series of charges and condemnations, Job is able to proclaim:

“I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:25-27)

Not only was Job a wealthy man of faith, but he was also respected, generous, and known for helping the poor, widows, and orphans. Long before James wrote, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27), Job was doing just that.

THE “WHY?” QUESTIONS

Still, alongside Job’s words of faith emerged the struggle with the “Why?” questions. Why is all of this happening? What did I do? Where are you, God? In Job’s book, he asks the Lord three specific questions:

Why was I born? (Job 3:11)

How can a man be just with God? (Job 9:2)

If a man dies, shall he live again? (Job 14:14)

Pain pushes us to question, just as storms cause us to doubt. God answers Job’s pleas and wonderings with a series of questions. Through them, He establishes His sovereignty. Regardless of the severity of the storm, God is still on the throne, and He holds us in His hand. Whenever we get to feeling, Woe is me, He is there to say things like, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4).

By this point, I would have been embarrassed as the Lord laid me out and “read my mail.” God didn’t stop there, either. His soliloquy goes on for the remainder of chapters 38 and 39 before pausing at the beginning of chapter 40 to ask, “Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it” (v. 2). Small wonder that Job answered meekly, “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer; yes, twice, but I will proceed no further” (vv. 4-5).

Honestly, none of Job’s lessons or insights came to mind as I lay there in the trauma center, shock waves still periodically coursing through my body. It would only be later, as I reflected on this experience and what God wanted to teach me, that I developed a deeper appreciation for how Jesus can help us through any tough season of life, no matter what the loss, how crushing the defeat or how paralyzed we might feel at the moment life takes a U-turn.

To grasp God’s goodness, we must contemplate the full story of Job. Too often, we can get hung up on his losses but forget the end of this ancient saga. Sure, Job walked through unimaginable grief and suffering, but he also came out in better shape than before the storm hit. This is the part of Job’s story worth remembering—that God is right there, walking through the storm by your side, whatever losses, grief, setbacks or obstacles you are facing.

If you think of this as some kind of empty promise, consider the blessings God bestowed on Job at the end of the book: “Now the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. . . . After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days” (Job 42:12-13; 16-17).

The best news is that Job isn’t some ancient figure whose relevance has faded with the passage of time. The same promises of restoration and blessing live on today through God’s Son, the Savior Jesus Christ. Just like He did in the story described in Matthew 14:22-33, Jesus still walks on water. He still takes our hand and guides us through gut-wrenching, fear-inducing, nerve-rattling setbacks.