MESSAGE OF THE MONTH - NOVEMBER 2021
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FROM TRAGEDY TO TRIUMPH
Early on in my ministry, I had the opportunity to go to America for the second time, around the end of the 1970s because I was invited by Pastor Floyd McClung Snr to preach at his church in Orange, California.
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Disneyland was just down the road from where he lived and also the Crystal Cathedral where Dr. Robert Schuller was the senior pastor. A very popular TV show called the HOUR OF POWER was broadcast from there every Sunday. It was a great joy to take the guided tour there on and learn about the ministry of this mega-church and the stories of faith that were part of its history.
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As part of the tour, we were given a book containing Dr. Schuller’s Ten Best Messages and the one that stood out for me was entitled TURN YOUR SCARS INTO STARS. This message was born out of personal tragedy and in my opinion, was his most real and moving sermon of all time. I have copied it out for you below:
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TURN YOUR SCARS INTO STARS
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“Behold a little child shall lead them.” This scripture verse means more to me today than it ever has before as I look back over this past summer and see how God has truly turned our scars into stars!
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(My wife) Arvella and I were in Korea ministering to 13,000 pastors when the call came on a Saturday morning that our daughter Carol has been thrown from a motorcycle in the dark of night and landed in a ditch badly injured.
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We tried desperately to get on an early plane and by a miracle of God, we succeeded. When we boarded the jet we received another call via satellite that telephone from the emergency room of Sioux City, Iowa. We learned that Carol’s left leg had been amputated below the knee. At this point, doctors didn’t even know if they would have to amputate any further or even if she would survive.
It turned out that there was a time in surgery when they failed to get a pulse beat or a blood pressure, but they gave her a blood transfusion and God saved the life of our little girl!
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When we finally reached Carol’s bedside, we had already seen three dawns. The first dawn was over the Pacific, the second was over Denver, Colorado, and the third was in Sioux City, Iowa, twenty-two hours after the accident had occurred. (That’s one of those marvellous things that can happen when you travel at jet speed toward the East). Three dawnings in one day! It was during the flight that we read from the Bible: “My heart is quiet and confident, O God. I will greet the dawn with a song!” (Psalm 57:7-8)
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No matter how you are hurting, no matter what your problem is, no matter what your pain may be, greet every new day with a song because God is in every daybreak! God rides in every morning and tomorrow will not be the same as yesterday.
Greet the dawn with a song!
The dawn was breaking as Mrs Schuller and I walked into St Joseph’s Hospital in Sioux City. Only twenty-two hours earlier they had picked up Carol’s broken body from an Iowa ditch. We stepped into the elevator and rode up to the intensive care unit.
As Arvella and I walked down the corridor moments away from getting the first glimpse of our little girl, I saw a poster that said, “Life is what happens when you are planning something else!”
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Just before we reached Carol’s door I said to my wife, “I don’t know if I can step into that room without bawling.” Now bawling is when you make a lot of noise. And I bawled across the Pacific. I felt it coming on like a seasickness that cannot be held back, so I went to the lavatory to release my emotions. Just as the loud, uncontrollable sounds came out, I decided to turn my problem into a possibility.
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I vocalised the agony-filled sounds to form the letters A-L-L-E-L-U-I-A. I repeated it several times – Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, and I found complete healing! So if you ever hurt so much that simple wet tears turn into an uncontrollable loud cry, simply say Alleluia!
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I was filled with strength when I entered Carol’s room and there were no tears. Our 13-year-old daughter was lying there in the hospital bed like a wounded bird in a cage with bars made out of steel. How we wanted to hold her in our arms but we couldn’t get close enough because of all the paraphernalia surrounding her.
I had rehearsed all kinds of opening lines during the plane flight and came up with a variety of openers like “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I didn’t feel right about that, yet I felt it would be the right thing to say but I was not even given the chance.
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When Carol saw us, she spoke the first words: “Hi Dad and Mom” she cheerfully greeted us. “I think I know why it happened.” Before we could respond, she continued, “I have four pastors now, you know. She mentioned two priests who were chaplains at the hospital, and then a Protestant minister who ministered to her while she was in the ditch. “One, two, three, and then there’s you Dad!” (I’m glad I was included)!
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And then she explained, “I think God has a special ministry in my life for people who have been hurt like I have.” Now I could understand why moments before, we were greeted at the airport by my oldest daughter Sheila, she had come running up to us and said, “Dad and Mom, when you see your daughter Carol you’ll be so proud of her!”
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It’s not what happens to you but how you react to what happens to you that makes the difference!
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When something happens that is out of your control and you feel there is nothing you can do about it you can still do something. You can decide what your reaction is going to be!
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Here was our 13-year-old daughter already choosing to react creatively to something she couldn’t do anything about!
When the frontline bandages were to be removed in surgery and doctors would see how badly damaged the thigh was, they gave me a sheet of paper to sign, giving them the authority to remove the knee and the thigh if necessary. It was very, very difficult for me to sign that paper. I decided to discuss it with Carol so I selected a time between seizures of pain. I shall never forget her brilliant answer. She said something I wish I had heard 27 years ago when I first became a pastor. I could have used it many times because it is so true!
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“Dad” Carol began, “I’ll tell you one thing. If they take my knee or my thigh… and she paused long enough to make sure I would hear and never forget what she was about to say. “It will not change God’s plan for my life one bit!” It was so profound!
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So - you lost a husband. That is not going to change God’s plan for your life. You lost a wife, a son, a daughter. You’ve lost more than I have. You may have gone through a tragedy that makes mine look insignificant, but let me tell you something.
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Nothing that happens to you can change God’s plan for your life one bit.
Only you can do that!
You can choose to react negatively or positively to what happens to you.
You have that choice.
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We all have hurts. Everybody has the cutting time of life, nobody is exempt from it. It’s only a matter of degree or quality, or time, that’s all. What it comes down to is, what philosophy of faith do you have that you can apply when life hurts you?
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Victor Frankl, an eminent Jewish psychiatrist, was standing naked and stripped before the Gestapo. They had taken his watch and had then seen his gold wedding ring and demanded that as well. As Frankl took the wedding band off his finger to hand it to the Gestapo officer, a thought went through his mind. He said to his captors: “There is one thing you can never take from me and that is my freedom to choose how I will react to whatever you do to me!”
That we all retain to the end.
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You can turn your scars into stars if you choose to react positively, not negatively to the hurts of life.
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You have only three choices:
You can react negatively and curse your hurts.
You can try to blame somebody but it does no good to fix the blame.
Fix the problem - don’t fix the blame!
Or You can react positively.
When you react negatively or seek to blame someone else, you only create the opportunity for many new problems to be born.
You can nurse your hurts, tenderly keeping them alive, indulging in self-pity, and asking yourself, “Why did he leave me? Why did she do this to me? Why did they put me down? Why did this happen to me? I don’t care what it is…
You can curse it.
You can nurse it.
You can even rehearse it, going over and over the hurts.
But you keep them alive rather than allow them to heal.
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The first piece of advice I gave to my daughter in a wounded state was “Carol, probably the biggest enemy you’ll have to watch out for now, and in the next days, months, and maybe for the rest of your life is the temptation for self-pity. And her answer was immediate and wiser than her years. Laughing, she said “Don’t worry about that Dad, I’ve got enough problems right now without that one.”
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So if you’ve got a problem or two, don’t bring another one in by feeling sorry for yourself because it’s going to produce a motherhood of additional emotional ailments.
Don’t curse your hurts, don’t nurse them, and don’t rehearse them – REVERSE them! Turn it inside out.
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The obstacle becomes an opportunity.
The problem becomes a possibility.
The hurt becomes a halo.
The scar becomes a star!
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How do you react positively? You react positively when you decide that somehow God is bigger than the hurt and He can turn the hurt into a halo, the scar into a star. I remembered this as I went through the hospital day after day – and my daughter remembered it too. I dropped the line to her once about turning her scar into a star and my mind went back several years when I delivered a message with the same title. It was 1973 and the text was from Hebrews 11;6 “Out of our weakness shall come strength.”
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The opening words of the message were: “That is like saying when a bone was broken it welded, knitted, healed and became stronger than ever before. Out of your weakness shall come strength. It was like saying that where the flesh was torn and broken and bleeding, it had healed. The scar is formed and the scar tissue is tougher than the skin ever was!”
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Out of your weakness shall come strength! So, you are hurting. Join the human race! It’s not the fact that you are hurting but how you are going to handle it, that’s what matters.
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You can turn your scars into stars if you have the right kind of faith.
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When we were waiting in the airport in Seoul, Korea, hoping to board a place to get to our daughter’s side soon, the pastor with whom I had been ministering, quoted the Bible verse I have spoken about many times: “All things work together for good to those who love God and keep His commandments” (Romans 8:28). I had heard that text probably a thousand times, but now I heard it knowing that my daughter was seriously hurt.
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I didn’t disbelieve it, I didn’t doubt it, I didn’t deny it, but I couldn’t feel it. And when you cannot feel it, then there’s only one thing to do – believe it and hang on!
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The night turns to dawn, eventually, the pain is gone and healing takes place. Through it all God has His time and His chance to show you how He can turn the worst burden into a blessing, the most horrible hurt into a halo – your ugly scar into a star!
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I have been in many royal mansions and palaces around the world, but nothing prepared me for the splendour of the Royal Palace in Teheran, Iran. The beauty of that palace is beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I do not believe there is anything like it in the world.
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As you step into the Royal Palace, you are immediately in the grand entry. The hall is resplendent with glittering sparkling glass – seemingly diamonds or crystal. But when you look closely, you discover that everything is covered with small pieces of mirrors. The edges of literally hundreds of thousands of little mirrors reflect the light, throwing out a myriad of reflections.
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When the guide told us the story, we were all amazed. Many years ago, the architect planned that the walls of the Royal Palace be covered with sheets of beautiful mirrors from Paris but when the shipment arrived, every mirror had been smashed in travel. The entire shipment was destroyed! The entrance could not be completed. Just as the workmen started gathering the broken pieces together to discard them, the architect said, “Wait a minute I’ve got an idea!”
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He took a hammer and broke some of the larger pieces. He gathered them in his hands and walked over to the entry. He then put some glue on the wall and arranged the tiny pieces. He did this several times until he had an enormous distortion in reflections, sparkling with a rainbow of brilliant colours! At no point were they broken alike and at no point was the angle exact.
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Today the palace is a dazzling brilliant display of prisms reflecting light! And I can only think of one line:
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“Broken to be more beautiful!”
TURN YOUR SCARS INTO STARS!
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