Coco Calling No.287 - When at the Heart of the Storm

On the night that my owner and his wife returned home from Edinburgh, something very strange happened. Something that’s never occurred in this house before. And because I’d been dozing on my perch in the kitchen beneath their bedroom, I heard everything.

It must have been about 4.00am. I could hear my owner’s gentle snores overhead. All was peaceful and all was quiet, until quite suddenly, all hell broke loose. First of all, there was a loud ‘thud,’ and then a frantic scrabbling sound. And this was followed by the kind of noises that you’d expect a musk ox to make if it was competing in a 100 metres sprint. All kinds of snorts and snores and bellows and gasps filled the night air.

My owner woke up from a very deep sleep, wondering what on Earth was going on, and immediately put his bedside light on. His wife should have been lying there in the bed beside him, but she wasn’t. No, she was scrabbling around on the floor under the bed with just her feet sticking out. And all the while, she was making the most dreadful noises. Thinking that she was having some kind of crazed dream, he pulled her out by the ankles, and started to shake her furiously. But instead of waking up, she simply fell limp and silent. So he ran to the bathroom and got some cold water to splash on her face, but that didn’t work either. And it was only then then he realised that something was seriously wrong.

After about ten minutes, she started to wake up with a very distant and vacant look on her face, and she promptly self-diagnosed that she’d had a fit. An ambulance arrived some three hours later, and once in hospital, scans revealed the presence of a 4cm brain tumour that was mercifully benign.

So how do you think they should have reacted to everything that happened? Because it’s another reminder about the fragility of life, and of how our lives in this world will always be beset by challenges and difficulties and tests of faith. Yes, there will always be some bad stuff lurking in the shadows. But it’s how we deal with it that really counts. Because we are never left entirely on our own. Both my owner and his wife sensed the calm presence of God as they waited in the A&E department for her scan results to come through, even though they knew that those results might mean either life or death. And they counted their blessings when told that the tumour was benign, and in an accessible area of the brain for surgery. And they counted their blessings for having access to a wonderful and extraordinary NHS.

So, what if they’d received the very worst news; how might they have reacted then? Well, that’s the point at which we all need to be grateful to Jesus for being Saviour to the world and allowing us all to overcome the finality of death. Because irrespective of what befalls us here on Earth, Jesus has given us all the perfect safety net. And it’s only when we grasp that fact that we can truly enjoy our worldly lives, and learn to live like  ‘cool parrots.’

“You may never know that Christ is all you need until Christ is all you have." (Corrie ten Boon:[1892-1983]: Dutch Christian writer and public speaker and survivor of a World War ii Nazi concentration camp)

“No pit is so deep that he is not deeper still; with Jesus even in our darkest moments, the best remains and the very best is yet to be.”

(Corrie ten Boon: as above)

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die."

(John 11:25)