"He Was Wounded For Our Transgressions"

Enough days have passed since a recent automobile accident that I can finally write about it. Up until three weeks ago all my near death experiences had involved horses. Now I can add a one-car roll over to that list.

It was a Thursday afternoon, and I was near home on my way from the office. The skies were clear, the air was warm, it was a perfect spring day. The stealthy all-electric Nissan Leaf I was driving was silently humming along. I put the car on cruise control at the posted speed limit, 50 mph. That was my last conscious memory until the car left the highway and started tumbling.

I hit a tree on the passenger side, and the force of the accident flipped it in midair and landed it on all four wheels in the opposite direction I had been traveling. The force of the impact came from the rear, smashing six of my ribs in my back. When the car came to rest I was strapped into my seat belt surrounded by destruction. All the windows were broken and shattered, and the interior was mangled beyond recognition. All the air bags deployed and I found myself in a protective cocoon inside the car. The car was a total loss.

I first moved my hands that had sustained some broken glass scratches and nicks, then my arms and legs, then my neck. I tried to reach for my cell phone, but the pain in my back was excruciating and I couldn't get it out of my pocket. I knew I had broken ribs, but I also knew my spine was not involved. I would live. I didn't lose consciousness throughout the ordeal. A passing motorist called for help on his cell phone and alerted Patsy.

In due time the paramedics arrived with an ambulance and I was transported on a back board with a neck brace to the emergency room at the Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake. The trip was nearly unbearable as I felt every bump in the road and the pain registered in my back.

I will spare the readers all the medical details. Suffice it to say I had never stayed overnight in a hospital in my entire life as a patient. I was told pain management was the only thing medicine had to offer me with my broken ribs. The trauma team put me through a CT scan from head to toe, and discovering no other injuries other than the cracked ribs, offered surgery to mend the bones with titanium plates on the six ribs, but when they described the benefits their case was not compelling enough to me. I opted for no surgery. They loaded me up with eight different meds in varying cocktails until they found a combination and frequency that worked. I was there for three days. Oxygen was added to aid my breathing.

When I left to go home, I discovered everything had changed and I had to begin again with even rudimentary tasks like learning how to go to the bathroom again with regularity. Showering was painful, but efficacious and it felt wonderful. Tiny shards of glass kept appearing as I showered and I meticulously picked them out of my skin. Eating was a chore, and nothing tasted right. My head was spinning. I was light-headed and dizzy. For those who talk about the benefits of masking pain with narcotics, I found them to be the antithesis of a desired life. I was walking with a walker to keep my balance, and I was admonished to practice my deep breathing to avoid pneumonia. Sleeping in a bed was nearly impossible, and I finally gave that up in favor sitting up in an overstuffed couch with pillows bracing my back. I was awake most nights, slept most days, and I found it difficult to discern the difference between night and day. Patsy was setting an alarm every two hours during the night and day to administer my meds.

Then, finally, after a week of all that at home I decided I'd had enough. I told her no more meds. I wanted to discover what my baseline of pain was without the meds, so I quit everything one night to see what would happen. I awoke to discover that I had slept and the pain was tolerable. Soon thereafter I quit the oxygen. By the time I went in for a follow-up exam with my doctor about a week and a half after the accident, I was walking unaided without oxygen and my blood was sustaining normal oxygenation levels again. His comment: "Your speedy recovery is an indication that your underlying health profile is excellent."

Based upon what I had been told at the hospital, I had expected 6 to 8 weeks of agonizing pain in the recovery process. In fact, I had gone back to the office and was driving again after 2 1/2 weeks.

I still feel some pain, but it is manageable. I am sleeping on both sides in bed without pain. My energy and stamina are still lagging, but I feel so blessed. My bruised and broken body is healing rapidly.

The rest of the story is that on scene at the accident site, the tow truck driver who came, along with the paramedics and the local police and volunteer fire department were all members of my ward. Patsy insisted that they give me a blessing before I was transported to the hospital, which they did. Then at the emergency room my sons who were nearby gathered and gave me another priesthood blessing. I was not appointed unto death (see D&C 42:48), and I am still healing and living on in mortality for purposes yet unknown to me. I am so grateful for this merciful deliverance. But for an inch or two here or there in that event, the outcome might have been very different.

Fifteen years ago this week, my mother passed away after a courageous battle with ovarian cancer. I became aware of her presence seated next to me last week in the chapel of the Woodland Ward at our fast and testimony meeting. I felt a distinct impression from her, "The time for us to be reunited is not yet. You have a work yet to do." My father, who still lives and is 93, was less comforting. He reminded me that I had arbitrarily taken away his car keys and sold his car to prevent this very kind of thing from happening to him. And now it had happened to me. Touche, father.

I have no idea what that work might involve, but I know I have gained added perspective on the suffering of our Savior in this Easter season. Never again when I read or sing the words about His broken and bruised body bleeding at every pore will I not personally connect and have immediate recognition of the degree of pain that was inflicted upon Him in the agonizing hours preceding His death and resurrection. While I may never know in full what that pain might have been, I have come to appreciate only in a small part what He must have suffered for each of us.

"But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5).

Elder Neal A. Maxwell offers this perspective:

". . . we are told that Jesus took upon Himself the infirmities of all of us in order 'that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.' (Alma 7:12. Italics added.) Being sinless Himself, Jesus could not have suffered for personal sin nor known what such agony is — unless He took upon Him our sins, not only to redeem us and to save us, but also in order that He might know how 'according to the flesh . . . to succor his people according to their infirmities.' A stunning insight!

"Thus the compassion of the divine Jesus for us is not the abstract compassion of a sinless individual who would never so suffer; rather, it is the compassion and empathy of One who has suffered exquisitely, though innocent, for all our sins, which were compounded in some way we do not understand. Though He was sinless, yet He suffered more than all of us. We cannot tell Him anything about suffering. This is one of the inner marvels of the atonement of Jesus Christ!" (Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, 35).

May we come to appreciate and understand what His liberating agony in Gethsemane and on Golgotha might mean to each of us, is my prayer.

Intelligent Design or Randomness?

I've enjoyed this quote from a book I've recommended, Gethsemane, by Andrew C. Skinner. It gives some indication of the vastness of our cosmos:

"Astronomers tell us that our solar system is located in a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, a flat, disc-shaped cluster of stars approximately 100,000 light years across at its widest point. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. Moving at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, a beam of light traverses 5.7 trillion miles in 365 days! The size of our galaxy in miles is a staggering 5.7 trillion times 100,000, and it is estimated to contain 200 billion stars, 50 percent of which (100 billion) possess solar systems like our own. The next closest galaxy is Andromeda, a galaxy much like our own Milky Way, that is approximately 2.2 million light years away from us. Further more, our best telescopes can probe outward into space to a distance of approximately 5 billion light years and view about 500 million galaxies, each of which possesses billions of stars. And these galaxies are only the ones we can detect with the present state of our technology. Truly, the observation made by Enoch the seer is one of the grandest understatements of all time: 'And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still' (Moses 7:30).

"The Savior redeems all that he creates. Such are the sweeping and incomprehensible powers of Jesus, the Victor of Gethsemane. And what's more, these creations are maintained and renewed continually by the very same power possessed by their creator, for

"he that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth;

"Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ . . .

"Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space —

"The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things." (D&C 88:6-13). (See Chapter One, Gethsemane).

Spend a few minutes and watch this video, then ask yourself, "Randomness or Intelligent Design?" It's the burning question on Roger Ebert's mind these days as he faces the reality of his eventual demise. He's already had two near-death experiences. He concludes the universe is completely indifferent to his existence and his eventual passing. He has no use for true believers and finds comfort instead in randomness and this passionless assessment:  "When I die, what happens? Nothing much. Every atom of my body will continue to exist. The sum of the universe will be the same. The universe will not know or care." What a sad prospect.

Despite Ebert's lack of belief in "the plan of salvation" in stark contrast to Skinner's statement of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, when Ebert dies his agnosticism will no doubt ultimately yield to the knowledge he is a much-beloved son of God. If there is a Plan, there certainly is a Planner who has revealed His intentions throughout Holy Writ. In fact, rather than hoard His designs, the Designer is giving away all the secrets of His vast creations to anyone who asks and seeks the truth.

Roger Ebert, like each son or daughter of God, will be greeted at the veil by the Holy One of Israel as he passes over, and I suspect he'll have an eye-popping view of eternity he never suspected awaited him. (2 Nephi 9:41). I'd love to be a fly on that wall! 

Intelligent Design or Chance and Randomness? You decide for yourself. . . but I'm betting on the Designer.

What always amazes me is this simple logic: If there is no God and death holds no promise beyond the grave, then I already have a purposeless existence, so what harm does it do to my soul if I believe in God and it's actually better than my present belief in nothing? 

Have I lost anything by believing too much?

Joseph Smith, facing his ultimate demise like Ebert, came to a completely different conclusion and reasoned thus on the question:

"I want to stick to my text, to show that when men open their lips against these truths they do not injure me, but injure themselves. To the law and to the testimony, for these principles are poured out all over the scriptures. When things that are of the greatest importance are passed over by weak-minded men without even a thought, I want to see truth in all its bearings and hug it to my bosom. I believe all that God ever revealed, and I never hear of a man being damned for believing too much; but they are damned for unbelief.

"They found fault with Jesus Christ because He said He was the Son of God, and made Himself equal with God. They say of me, like they did of the apostles of old, that I must be put down. What did Jesus say? 'Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods? If He called them Gods unto whom the word of God came, and the scriptures cannot be broken, say ye of Him whom the Father had sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said I am the Son of God?' It was through Him that they drank of the spiritual rock. Of course He would take the honor to Himself. Jesus, if they were called Gods unto whom the word of God came, why should it be thought blasphemy that I should say I am the Son of God?" (TPJS, 373-74).

Three weeks later at Carthage Jail in Illinois, the Prophet Joseph and his brother Hyrum sealed their testimonies with their martyrs' blood.