The following devotion is a slightly revised version of the sermon I preached on July 20, 2014. That was the Sunday I returned from a month in the hospital and over two months recovering from four surgeries in the span of ten days. I pray this message is a blessing to you, whether you are now walking through a dark valley, or will be one day.
Reading: Psalm 139:1-2, 13-18, 23-24
“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.”
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Words cannot express how much it means to me to be able to stand here today. My experience of the past three-and-a-half months, especially the months of April and May, was not just a challenge to my health, or to my body. This has been a challenge to my faith. This has been a walk through the valley of shadows, and I feel that I’m being called to share this valley walk with you. Some of you are making similar journeys right now. Some are walking through even darker valleys than my family and I walked. The rest of you will, at some point.
My valley came upon me very suddenly. It was more like a sinkhole that opened suddenly under my feet than a valley we gradually enter. I awoke early on the morning of April 6, a Sunday morning, the worst possible morning for a preacher. My stomach was cramping and I figured I had a bug of some sort. Over the next few hours, the cramping became severe, and Suzette took me to the emergency room at 4:30 in the morning. The diagnosis was a blockage of the small intestine, and the normal procedure is to put in an NG tube and spend a couple of days taking nothing into your body. By Wednesday, we thought it had worked and I went home, but soon realized it had not worked. Back in the hospital, five more days of nothing to eat or drink, which still did not work, and I was transferred to Baptist hospital to have surgery.
I won’t go into the gory details but the first surgery was followed a few days later by a second surgery to deal with infection that had spread through my abdomen. That surgery was followed a couple of days later with a third surgery to repair a leak in the resection of my intestine, and that surgery was followed a couple of days later by a fourth surgery to close everything internally. At least one of those four surgeries contained high risk of complications, which my family knew about but I did not. I also contracted two bacterial infections during my recovery and spent quite a few days in Intensive Care. Things finally began to get on track, though, and, exactly one month to the day I went into the hospital, I went home, amazingly weak, and with a large open wound in my stomach that would have to heal from the inside out.
That wound is still there – almost healed, but still with a few weeks to go. That wound, though has been the source of my spiritual and emotional struggle, more than anything else. If you have never had the experience of looking down at your abdomen and being able to see inside yourself, I hope you don’t ever have to. Never have I felt so vulnerable, so defenseless, so helpless, so afraid. There was a hole in my belly, and there was nothing I could do about it, except to trust the doctors who promised me it would heal up on its own, but that it would take months to do so. I have never been so afraid of anything. It surprised me how much this frightened me.
I prayed a lot over the last several months, but there were three times each day when I prayed with special intensity. Those were the three times each day when Suzette changed the dressing on that open wound.
I must take a minute to say what a source of strength Suzette has been to me. She has been my nurse, changing dressings; my therapist, helping me get my strength back; and my angel, patiently reminding me of God’s presence through her presence; God’s love through her love. She’s been the source of strength God has given me in my weakness, and I am unable to express my gratitude in words.
But, back to those three times of prayer. When she would change my dressing, I would see that hole again, and it would remind me of my vulnerability and helplessness, and during those times, two psalms would return to me, and they would become my prayers to God. The first was Psalm 8. I wasn’t reading these psalms, they came to me from memory, from the times we had recited them in worship. I’ve never tried to memorize them, but they came out of our times of corporate worship and study. I didn’t reach for them, they reached out and touched me.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars that you have established,
What are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than the angels,
And crowned them with glory and honor.
O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.
In those moments when I felt so insignificant and helpless and vulnerable, the psalmist’s words were God’s words reminding me that, though God has created the heavens, the moon and the stars, the entire universe, God has also made you and me a little lower than the angels; just below the beings of heaven. God is mindful of me; God does care about me; even in our weakest moments, God has crowned us with glory and honor, which only shows how majestic God’s name is in all the earth.
And then the words of Psalm 139: For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
I am, you are, we all are the handiwork of God; each of us has been formed and knit together in our mother’s womb; fearfully and wonderfully made, with amazing strength, awesome capabilities for healing, incredible abilities of endurance. How else would a six-inch hole in your gut heal over all on its own?!
These two psalms came to me in those three dressing-change-slash-prayer-times. They would regularly bring tears to my eyes, tears that were both from my fear, and from the answers they brought to my fears. They came to me, but they came to me because of all the times we have shared them in worship, and it has often crossed my mind that so many who don’t read the Bible, who do not worship regularly, when they walk through those valleys, words like the 8th and 139th psalms have no opportunity to be brought from their memories and offered as words of comfort and strength, as lanterns lighting the shadowy valley floor before them.
The church is usually spoken of critically by our culture, but, it has been the church who has carried Suzette and me through this time with all of your cards, notes, phone calls, visits, delicious meals, and most of all, your prayers. And it has been through the worship of the church that God’s word of comfort, strength and hope has been planted in my soul, where God’s Spirit could enable it to bear fruit and give me hope in my journey through this shadowy valley. So, not only do I give thanks for God, and for Suzette, but I give thanks for you, the people of God.
There is also one other psalm that has been very important in this valley. One day while we were in the hospital and things seemed so dark and difficult, we began to wonder if we’d ever get out, Suzette said she had been trying to think of scripture passages that would be of help. I had been trying to think of the same thing, and I told her that the only passage that kept coming to my mind was the 23rd Psalm. I’d like to close with the well-known and loved words of that psalm.
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life:
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
My prayer is that these words will be planted deeper and deeper into your soul, and when you, too, walk through the shadowy valley, God’s Spirit will bring them from your memory banks to light the way, and bring you comfort, strength, and hope.
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Sermon delivered by Ken Broman Fulks from Raleigh Durham (NC).
Brought to you by Diane Gutierrez Absolute Consulting & Coaching 864.420.1581 diane@dianeabsoluteconsulting.com www.dianeabsoluteconsulting.com
