Here I Raise Mine Ebenezer
This familiar line from the hymn,
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,
has become very special to me since last Christmas. (The word Ebenezer means
"stone of help" and was the name of a monument raised by the prophet
Samuel, saying, "Thus far has the
Lord helped us" (1 Sam. 7:12.)) I had retired in June 2012 after
serving thirty-two years as a UM pastor in Florida. Since my wife, Cheryl, and
I had lived in church parsonages all of our married life, the Christmas season was
especially meaningful because the week after Thanksgiving we had moved into our
first home. Then the phone rang.
A few weeks earlier Cheryl had
been notified that the radiologist had found something suspicious on her
mammogram. The re-test was inconclusive and a biopsy was scheduled. The
hospital had called the day before and said the results were negative. On this
day, we were going to be celebrating the good news with friends at a Celtic
Christmas Concert. Then the phone rang. It was Cheryl’s doctor with news that
the hospital had made an error. The biopsy was in fact positive for cancer. Cheryl
was scheduled for surgery on January 9, 2013.
Five days after Cheryl’s surgery
I felt tightness in my chest while working out at the Y. My doctor sent me to
the hospital for an x-ray and blood tests and told me to wait there until he
called. Then the phone rang. It was my doctor telling me to go to the ER where
they would be expecting me.
“Why?”
“Because the blood tests revealed
you are having a heart attack right now!”
Thirty minutes later I was riding
in an ambulance to Mission Hospital for quadruple cardiac bypass surgery.
For the next three months Cheryl
underwent radiation treatments and I went to cardiac rehab. Throughout this
time we were enveloped in love and support by our pastors, our Sunday school
class and our neighbors. Every need was met, even volunteers walking our dogs. For
a while the scar in the center of my chest was a painful reminder of the ordeal
we encountered last Christmas. Now the scar is my personal Ebenezer; a reminder
that “God will meet all your needs
according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
Alex M. Knight
Advent 2013
Sē’lah
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(Selah is a word that appears in the
Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my
correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about
these things.)
These
meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his
way of life. The meditations are
published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/
and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may
subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by
subscription.
Publications by Alex M. Knight:
·
Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New
Testament and Psalms has been
published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.
·
The second
edition of First Think – Then Pray
is available on Amazon Kindle.
·
Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus
Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.
Unless
otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible,
New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of
Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188.
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