Dieses Zeugnis des US-amerikanischen Philosophen Mark R. Talbot hat mich bewegt:
When I was seventeen, I fell about fifty feet off a Tarzan-like rope swing, breaking my back and becoming paralyzed from the waist down. I spent six months in hospitals. Initially, I had no feeling or movement in my legs and no bowel or bladder control. I dropped from 200 pounds to 145 pounds because I was so nauseated that I couldn’t eat. Once my back had stabilized a little and I had regained some movement in my legs, the doctors tried to help me to regain more by having me crawl to breakfast each morning. At the time, an undetected calcified stone had formed in my bladder. It was causing raging bladder infections that made me completely incontinent. And so as they would put me on the floor each morning, I would wet myself and remain soaked for the rest of the day. When I left the hospital, after the stone was finally discovered and removed, I was able to control my bladder in most situations and walk awkwardly with a cane.
I’m now fifty-two. My accident has had several long-term consequences. Walking is increasingly more difficult, although it is important for me to stay on my feet in order to exercise my legs. I walk by forcing my leg muscles to spasm, which raises my blood pressure and makes it hard to find ways to exercise adequately to stay in cardiovascular shape. Physical discomfort is pretty steady. I have to remain alert to some physiological concerns that most people never have to think about. In the last ten years or so, I have sometimes had sleep-robbing leg spasms. And in this last year, I’ve learned that my inability to walk has depleted the bone-density in my left hip to the place where, if I take a serious fall, it is likely to break.
Im Wissen um diese herben Schläge in seinem eigenen Leben strahlen seine Statements umso heller auf:
- I conclude that nothing happens to us—nothing good and nothing bad—that is not ultimately from God.
- I think that nothing takes God by surprise because he has ordered—or “ordained”—every event from before creation.
John Piper. Justin Taylor. Paul Kjoss Helseth. Beyond the Bounds. Crossway: Wheaton 2003. (78-79)
