Finding Answers After Loss

In 1997, a motor accident left me as an incomplete paraplegic. The healing process was long, and it came with questions I could not put down. Why did this happen to me? And behind that question stood another one: my brother had died only a few years before the accident, and I was still carrying that loss.

Where do you go for answers to questions like these? For me, the best place I knew was the Bible. So, I began to study.

My search began in Genesis, and the first thing I found there was the seventh-day Sabbath and the Sabbath rest. In my situation, that rest gave me peace of mind.

At the very same time, my mother was also deep in Bible study. She had lost one son, and another was now in a wheelchair. We did not study together. We each studied on our own. But every once in a while, we would come together to see what the other had been reading, and we found that we had arrived at the same Sabbath.

Because I found the Sabbath, I now thought that I should become a literal Christian Jew. I even got the Jewish flag and hung it on my cupboard door. Not long after this, I sat on my bed, looking at the flag and admiring it, when I heard a voice telling me to take it down.  I didn’t listen the first time, but then I heard it again. “Take the flag down.” I still didn’t listen, but then it came again; this time it was clear. I immediately got into my wheelchair, rolled to my cupboard, and took down the flag.

Then one day, I was in my room again, looking out the window at the sky. The voice came once again. It said that the things I had learned were not as they are.

I did not know what it meant. But I had been admiring the creation of God, and the words seemed to be speaking about nature. So, I decided to research everything I could about the cosmos: the stars, the sun, the moon, and the firmament from the Bible with e-Sword. In school, we are taught the cosmology of the secular world and the universities, not biblical cosmology. I wanted to know what the Word of God says. What I found was the opposite of what I had been taught. The Bible speaks of water above and water below, with the firmament holding it in. When I looked at the Hebrew root of the word firmament, it did not describe something soft or airy. It describes something firm, a structure. The sun, moon, and stars are set in it, which told me they are not millions and millions of years away.

I also found the verses that speak of the sun and moon moving, such as Joshua asking God that the sun should stand still, and the verses that say the earth shall not be moved. Everyone must choose for themselves what to believe, and that is why we live by faith. I choose to have faith in the Word of God. What it says stands above what men think. A confirmation came from an unexpected place. My niece, who was studying for her science exams, told my mother something strange. Her science teacher had told the class to write exactly what is in the textbook, or they would not get marks. But he also told them that after they studied the textbook, they should go out and observe nature for themselves, not accept everything in the textbook as credible, and use their own thinking, because the textbook might be wrong.

To me, that echoed the voice at the window: the things you have learned are not as they are.

About two years after this, I was sitting in church in the far back row in my usual spot when I looked up and saw the back of a young woman’s head, and there I heard that voice again. “There is your wife.”

I have always wanted to get married and have a family. I wanted to be a good husband and a good dad. But after my accident, my whole mindset changed. The thought of having a wife was now far from my mind, as it hurt too much to ever hope for that.  You can imagine how surprised I was when I heard those words.

When I met my wife (yes, that one), we did a lot of Bible study together, and during one of those studies, the subject of cosmology came up. I gave her my testimony and showed her my Bible studies. She told me that she felt so relieved because, for many years, she had had questions popping into her mind about the earth, and she would brush them away, but now all those brushed-away questions were answered in one Bible study.

Now, 18 years later, Pastor Adrian started preaching on Bible cosmology. It is a second confirmation. What I learned all those years ago, in the quiet after my accident, I now hear Pastor Adrian speak, and am thankful that we find ourselves on the same solid platform.

How different my life could have been if I had not listened to the prompting voice guiding me? Would I have been here today, with a loving wife and two precious sons? Would I have been on the solid, immovable platform? Would I have learned about the Character of God?

I went looking for answers after the worst years of my life, and I found rest, peace, and a firm foundation in the Word of God. My hope is that anyone who has hard questions will go looking too, and find the same peace.

Our Father speaks to all of us. Are we willing to listen?