In A Strait Betwixt Two

This post serves as a followup to Nevertheless, I Live. You can find that post here.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:12

It was not until a local TV news reporter showed up at the hospital to interview me that I began to have a sense of the singularity of my current situation. Up to that point I had groggy memories of a recovery room – of people, family and friends, coming and going. I remembered participating in a five-kilometer race to raise money on behalf of a young boy who had been severely burned. I could recall a shadowy image of a strapping young firefighter who was running the race fully equipped – helmet, heavy coat, tank on the back, the full rig. I vaguely remembered thinking as I passed him – “I can’t let this guy beat me”. I remembered waking up on a hospital gurney and my wife telling me that I had suffered a heart attack. I took the news in the same measured stride that had been my trademark throughout life up to this point. People have heart attacks every day. I’ll deal with it.

The appearance in my hospital room of the KY3 news reporter and his subsequent broadcast report on the events surrounding my sudden cardiac arrest and rescue sparked a fire of discovery that became my passion for the first few days of my at-home recovery. I Googled. I watched documentaries on food, diet and cardiology. I read. I spoke with witnesses of the event. I looked for statistics, for causes and reasons. I Googled some more. Every one of the multiple research threads that I strung up on my imaginary crime solving pin chart eventually found their way to the same blunt conclusion, the singularity for which I was searching, i.e. – I should be dead, but I was alive.

It was a lot to take in. Thoughts and ideas, what-ifs and whys, can float through your mind like so many baited hooks bobbing just below the surface of a pond. You nibble at each of them, losing interest over time. But then, there is the one that hooks you, deeply, securely, inescapably, dragging you against your will into the great unknown. That hook for me was a preoccupation with “what should have been”.

I had been told by my cardiologist not to do anything for the first week of my recovery. I mostly complied. It was spring and the weather was beautiful. I spent a lot of time just sitting in my garage with the doors open, taking in the sights and sounds of life. My perceptions had changed significantly since my unlikely resuscitation. The sky was bluer than it had ever been before. The grass and trees were greener. There were sounds I had never heard, or perhaps never paid attention to before. My senses were operating at a heightened state of awareness. I felt like an explorer discovering a spectacular new world – “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4 KJV)

The world outside my garage doors had become to me a wonder of God’s creation, the consideration of which seemed naturally to lead me to thoughts of the incomprehensible wonders of God’s promise of eternal life to those who believe in His Son – the promise of everlasting glory in heaven far outstripping even the glory of my newly discovered world – “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard…” I felt the tug. It was as if a spiritual gravity were relentlessly pulling me to a place I should be but was not. I had nearly crossed over to that place just a few days before. I longed to be there now. I should be there now.

I took account of my life, as had Paul when he wrote to Timothy – “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.” (2 Timothy 4:7 NIV) I believed that I, too, could make that statement. My work here was finished. I was tired. I had been faithful. I had “left it all out on the field.” I could think of nothing else that I needed to accomplish in this life. Vince Lombardi was one of my childhood heroes. I love this quote from him – “I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle – victorious.” I could relate. I believed I had seen my finest hour. May 30, 2015 would have been a good day to die.

And yet – as strong as the pull upward had become, an equally strong pull had developed in the opposing direction. I honestly did not think that my near departure from this world would have the effect on people that I was now observing. Friends, family, and co-workers reached out to me expressing their (dare I say) delight that I had not yet abandoned this earthly ship. I could see in the faces of my children that they were pretty happy old dad was still around. The one grandchild who was old enough to understand what had happened (he had actually been present at the 5K event when I went down), was clearly glad that his occasional Saturday expeditions to Rapid Roberts (Speedy Bob’s as we call it) with Pops would continue. And then, of course, there is my darling Rebecca.

My longsuffering wife of thirty years had begged God to keep me around. I could clearly see that her world was shaken by the event and the reality of what might have been. I could feel her hurt and her fear, deep, menacing, lonely – a tunnel with no light. I promised myself that I would do anything, everything I could, to prevent a repeat of what had happened on that Saturday in May.

The exercise and diet regimen I chose to follow was difficult. Heart rehab in general is difficult, especially when your inner heart longs to be home with the Lord. Life is hard, men grow weary. In as much as the pull to leave this weary flesh had increased, the pull to remain had grown equally strong. It seemed, perhaps, my work was not finished. It appeared that it was needful to others, to my family, to my wife, that I remain in this world a while longer.

Near the end of his life, from a prison cell in Rome, Paul wrote these words to the believers in Philippi – “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I live in the flesh, this is the fruit of my labor: yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you.” (Philippians 1:21 – 24 KJV)

The phrase “I am in a strait betwixt two” is a translation of the Greek phrase “sunechomai de ek ton duo.”  Sunechomai derives from the Greek verb sunecho – to constrain, to control or to hold by force. Here it is in the Greek passive voice meaning that Paul is not doing the constraining, he is constrained by something. De is an article of superaddition. It is not translated. It simply tells the reader that the clause to follow is to be added to the meaning of the verb. Ek ton duo means “from the two.” The phrase pictures two equal constraining forces from opposing sides.

Imagine a man in the middle of a field with a horse tied to each arm pulling in opposite directions with equal force. As long as the pull of the two horses remain equal to each other the man will remain stationary, constrained in one place. If that man were able to speak in such a dire situation he could describe his predicament with the exact Greek phrase that Paul used to describe his own situation – “sunechomai de ek ton duo!”

Kenneth Wuest (1893 – 1962) was a noted New Testament Greek scholar and a professor at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. In his book “The New Testament: An Expanded Translation” (pub. 1961), he gives us the following word picture translation of sunechomai de ek ton duo – “I am being held perpendicularly by an equal pull from the two (namely, my desire to remain on earth for further fruit bearing and my desire to die and be with Christ), so that I am not able to incline towards either one.” Paul could not cast his favor on either choice, life on earth or life in heaven, because the pull from both was equally strong. What an amazing picture!

I have determined that God has brought me to that place to which Paul refers – a place I will call “A Strait Betwixt Two”. And, here is the unexpected paradox, unlike the place in which our imaginary horse-tied man is held, Paul’s “strait betwixt two” is a good place to be – in fact, it is a great place to be!

It is a mountaintop vantage point from which one can view the glory of the Lord in heaven when looking to the north, and the glorification of our Lord here on earth when looking to the south. It is a place where death is gain and yet continued earthly life adds to the increase. It is a place where the Light from heaven above illuminates and guides all of our earthly endeavors. It is a place where our perspective on all earthly events and endeavors is set from above, where Christ dwells with the Father.

And this is where the rubber meets the road, my friends – it is a place where a notoriously unemotional man, who was never a singer, who never even sang to the radio in his car, suddenly and out of the blue joins the church choir for the sheer joy of singing praises to God on Sunday morning!

I lean towards a belief that A Strait Betwixt Two is a place and a special blessing that God reserves for, what I will call, His “elder” saints. I have no specific biblical foundation for this opinion other than general observations gleaned from studying the Psalms and Proverbs, and the lives of men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Peter, and Paul. I know that, for myself as a young man, I was not cognizant of this place. My life was busy, hectic – occupied with raising a family, with ministry at church, with personal study, with making a living and with proving a self-sacrificial  love for my wife. God set me on a course to discover this new place, this Strait Betwixt Two, by nearly taking my life. I am glad now that He did not. I would have missed dwelling in this place, even though the stay is temporary.

May I say to my children especially, and also to any and all young believers who may read this – REMAIN FAITHFUL! Remain faithful to God. Remain faithful to your spouse. Remain faithful to the raising of your children. Remain faithful to the ministry in which God has placed you. No one says it will be easy but, for those that stay the course and do not deviate, I believe with all my heart that God has reserved for you a special place of blessing. When the time comes, you will find it; for others have been there before you. It lies in A Strait Betwixt Two. And it is a good place to be.