Inscrutably Blessed

I had occasion a while back to consider the possible intersection of three disjointed stories. Two of the stories are true while the other is a familiar internet parable.

The first story is true, and it happened 4 or 5 years ago.

I left work for lunch one day to run errands and stopped in at Quizno’s for a sandwich. At the table in front of me were a man and his two sons, one high school aged and the other in college. The older son had his left leg in a rather impressive looking contraption. Steel bars, elastic straps and metal pins penetrating the skin held his leg in a semi-extended position resting on a chair in the aisle.

I sat and watched the family. They interacted like most father/son/son families—sometimes sometimes talking about school or sports, but mostly concentrating on eating. A little while later, two men entered the restaurant, one pushing the other in a wheelchair. The man in the wheelchair wore a baseball cap, khakis and a plaid button down. He recognized the family in front of me, and his friend pushed him to their table, then went and stood in line to order. By their conversation, I could tell they were more like acquaintances than close friends. The man in the wheelchair talked mostly to the older son, and they spoke at length about the football game in which the boy received his knee injury. The man in the wheelchair had seen the game on TV, and they talked about play after play in that game until they eventually talked about the play that caused the knee injury. "When you went down, I knew you were hurt," he said. They talked about the surgeries that ensued and the rehab.

That’s when the man smiled and said, "But, at least yours will heal." At that, still smiling, he raised his ball cap off of his head and showed them a large depression in his skull. There was a football-shaped crater in the man's head probably 6 inches across, and it was clear that a portion of the man's skull and brain were just missing.

He put his cap back on, still smiling, and said, "Just one of God's inscrutable blessings."
I thought, “Are you kidding? A blessing? A big chunk of your head is missing, and you call that a blessing? Have you lost your mind?”

Then, I remembered: He called it an inscrutable blessing, and that’s when I realized…I needed a dictionary.

It turns out that inscrutable means that something is unfathomable, incomprehensible, inexplicable or enigmatic. It’s something that can’t be explained.

So, this man who has suffered a traumatic head injury that apparently left him wheelchair bound sees the crater in his head as a blessing, though he can’t explain why it’s a blessing. He was able to take what most people would call a debilitating tragedy and instead, see it as a blessing, and then actually praise God for it where most might blame God for it. It was truly awesome to witness such faith. And, it must be faith because he called it inscrutable. Basically, he knew it was a blessing from God, but he didn't fully understand it. He had to accept without evidence that this was a blessing from God.

Could I have enough faith to say, "God, thank you for my cranial crater that's left me wheelchair bound?" Could I see the loss of a limb or even a job as a blessing? To be honest, I'd rather not have to find out. I prefer my blessings to be of the apparent or obvious variety.

Now, here is the second disjointed story.

I sometimes tell my daughter, Sarah, to 'freeze' for no apparent reason. When I yell 'freeze' or 'stop', she's expected to stop dead in her tracks and not move. We might be walking down the sidewalk or a running on the playground, and I'll call for her to freeze. Sometimes she stops; sometimes she takes a couple of extra steps. But, hey, she's a kid.

My wife asked me once why I do that, and I told her, "I'm training her. Right now, it's a game to her. I say 'freeze' and she freezes. But, if there is ever a reason she needs to stop on a dime—either a car is racing toward her or a piano is falling from the sky or there's a snake in her path or whatever—I need to know that she will do what I say reflexively."

Now, hold that thought. On to the third story.

There was a story passed around the internet about a man who decided to give himself completely to God and become His servant. God showed him a large boulder in the road and told him to push it. The man pushed and pushed all day, but it didn't move an inch. The next day, he pushed more and still the boulder didn't move. He continued pushing for many months, and still the boulder didn't budge. God appeared to him again, and the man fell on his face saying, "I've failed you, Lord. You asked me to push this boulder, and I've failed to move it even an inch."

The Lord replied, "I asked you to push the boulder. I didn't ask you to move it." The man looked up, and the Lord continued, "When you came to me you were weak, thin and pale. You weren’t strong enough to do the work I have for you. Now, look at yourself. Your arms are strong, your back is powerful, and your legs are like oak trees. Your skin is tanned against the sun. By faith, you have become capable to do my work. NOW, you are ready to serve Me."


So, putting all this together, my daughter is in training—she plays a silly game with me without apparent purpose so I'll know she'll be ready if the day comes when 'freeze' is important. The man in the parable was in training—doing a task that was without apparent purpose so that when the time came, he would be ready to serve the Lord. I saw that man in the wheelchair and I think he must have been in training a long time, because his faith was so strong that, when the time came, he believed by faith that God's hand was woven into his tragedy/blessing, though he could not explain it.

So now, I’m working through the mental gyrations to a new perspective of faith. I used to see it as a choice. I choose to believe in God, and that all good things come from him. Now, I’m starting to think that faith is more like a muscle that needs to be exercised to be strengthened.

Maybe God throws things at us that we first view as a curse/tragedy (miscarriage, congenital hearing loss, diabetes, etc.). And at first, we bemoan the event; we see it as a curse. We think, how could God do this? It reminds me of the Israelites escaping from Egypt into the desert and complaining to Moses, “Why have you led us into the desert to die? We could have stayed in Egypt and died there, and it would’ve been a lot less trouble.”

Our first instinct is to take a tragedy and see the curse in it. But, maybe the more we see the blessings in our tragedies, the more we are able to strengthen our faithius maximus muscle so that one day, by faith alone, we see (or maybe seek) the blessings in everything.

Whether it's a screaming child that we can't calm down, a traumatic head injury, the loss of a loved one, a promotion, winning the lottery, sunsets or thunderstorms, if we see through the veil of the apparent curse and have faith that it’s part of God’s plan, then maybe we can look at our own personal tragedies, smile and say, "Just one of God's inscrutable blessings."