O God of
Love.
May your grace and peace come, may your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Keep us healthy and humble 'til our time has come.
And as we forgive those who've done us harm, forgive us for the harm we've done.
And keep us safe from temptation and evil.
For you are the Way, the Truth, and the Light, now and forever.
Amen.
In the Christmas story told in the gospel of Matthew a bright star guides three strangers to a stable where a baby named Jesus is born. The three men, known as “wise men” because they studied both the stars and the scriptures of the Jews, bring gifts to a child destined to change the world.
The story links the mystery of the universe with human life on earth. As an adult, Jesus would teach his followers a prayer that begins: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The life of Jesus embodies this prayer and more than two billion Christians continue to say this prayer and to celebrate the birth of Jesus.
Every person who has ever lived, however, is also a child of the stars. In their book Journey of the Universe authors Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker write that “the stars are our ancestors.” In the heat and pressure of stars, and then in their supernova explosions, stars give “birth to the elements that eventually form our planet and our bodies.” Stars are, Swimme and Tucker affirm, “wombs of immense creativity.”
The star in our galaxy we call the sun makes life on earth possible. And as its temperature has increased, the earth “has adapted itself so as to remain in the narrow band that enables life to flourish. By drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere via photosynthesis, Earth altered the composition of its atmosphere to keep itself cool, as the Sun grew hotter. This adaptive dance between life and nonlife changes our thinking about our planet. Earth is not just a big ball upon which living beings exist. Earth is a creative community of beings that reorganizes itself age after age so that it can perpetuate and even deepen its vibrant existence. This dynamic or reorganization is possible because of life’s most essential capacity—its power to adapt.”
“The deep truth about matter,” Swimme and Tucker explain, “is that, over the course of four billion years, molten rocks transformed themselves into monarch butterflies, blue herons, and the exalted music of Mozart.” We are, however, “the first generation” to learn that our sun is one of trillions of stars “in one of the billions of galaxies in an unfolding universe.” Our human responsibility “is to deepen our consciousness in resonance with the dynamics of the fourteen-billion-year creative event in which we find ourselves.”
The universe story, Swimme and Tucker suggest, “has the power to awaken us more deeply to who we are.” For “as the Milky Way is the universe in the form of a flower, we are the universe in the form of a human. And every time we are drawn to look up into the night sky and reflect on the awesome beauty of the universe, we are actually the universe reflecting on itself.”
The scientific story of the universe was unknown to Jesus, but he knew the earth story offered us the challenge of doing “on earth as in heaven” the will of the one he called “Our Father.” May we be inspired this Christmas to “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) in these stories.
Brian Thomas Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, Journey of the Universe (Yale University Press, 2011).
“According to the teaching of St. Paul, discrimination of the spirits is a sign of true spiritual consciousness. You have to be able to tell one invisible from another. One method the Catholic Church used for refining this discernment is its proliferation of official angels and saints. The variety of figures showed many qualities, a host of different natures and areas of operation. (The more recent rationalized church has been downsizing the invisible realm, submitting its imagination to historical criteria. Every invisible saint had to have a visible forebear with a historical pedigree. So we lost St. Christopher and others who were ‘sheer myths.’)
“Then in the kingdom (or is it a mall?) of the West, consciousness has lifted the transcendent ever higher and farther away from actual life. The bridgeable chasm has become a cosmic void. The gods have withdrawn, said the poets Hölderlin and Rilke; it takes a leap of faith, said Søren Kierkergaard. Not even that will do for God is dead, said Nietzsche. Any bridge must be of superhuman proportions. Well, that kind of bridge our culture has ready to hand; the greatest bridge, some say, ever constructed between visible and invisible: the figure of Jesus Christ.
“Once invisibility has been removed from backing all the things we live among, so that all our accumulated ‘goods’ have become mere ‘stuff,’ deaf and dumb and dead consumables, Christ becomes the only image left in the Kingdom for bringing back to our culture the fundamental invisibility upon which cultures have always rested. Fundamentalism attempts, literally and dogmatically, to recover the invisible foundations of culture. Its strength lies in what it seeks; its menace in how it proceeds.
“Christ as bridge (and isn’t the pope, vicar of Christ, still called the pontiff from pons, bridge), because the Incarnation means the presence of the invisible in the common matter of walking-around human life. A god-man: visible and invisible become one. Centuries of huge and vicious debates have attempted to split the unity by coming down on one side or the other: Jesus is really a divinely inspired but visible man; Christ is really the invisible God borrowing human shape.
“Some glue, some independent link was required to hold these two theological incommensurables together, a third term that was different from the other two and that could join mortal and immortal. This third person, Christian theology named the Holy Ghost. But this figure, too, belongs among the invisibles, which still tilts the balance away from the world. So the debate goes on, as it should, because the relation between these two terms gives rise to metaphysical speculation and religious practices that keep the problematic idea of the invisible from slipping away. Besides, the debate gives rise to this chapter’s focus upon the often strained relation during school years between the invisible acorn and the life of the person with whom it lives.
“The great task of a life-sustaining culture is to keep the invisibles attached, the gods smiling and pleased: to invite them to remain by propitiations and rituals; by singing and dancing, smudging and chanting; by anniversaries and remembrances; by great doctrines such as the Incarnation and the little intuitive gestures—such as touching wood or by fingering beads, a rabbit’s foot, a shark’s tooth; or my putting a mezuzah on the doorpost, dice on the dashboard; or by quietly laying a flower on a polished stone.
“All this has nothing to do with belief and so it also has nothing to do with superstition. It’s merely a matter of not forgetting that the invisibles can go away, leaving you with nothing but human relationships to cover your back. As the old Greeks said of their gods: They ask for little, just that they not be forgotten. Myths keep their daimonic realm invisibly present.”
James Hillman,
The Soul’s Code, 97-127.
Dr. Rajiv Parti was encouraged when he learned the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill Wilson, had been inspired by a near-death experience in 1934. While being treated at a clinic for his addiction, the clinic’s director asked Wilson “if he would like to dedicate himself to Jesus to see if such an act would rid him of his alcoholism. “Depressed and filled with despair, Wilson began to weep. I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let him show himself! He shouted.
The effect was instant, electric, Wilson says. Suddenly my room blazed with an incredibly white Light. I was seized with an ecstasy beyond description. I have no words for this. I was conscious of nothing else for a time. Then, seen in the mind’s eye, there was a mountain. I stood upon its summit where a great wind blew. A wind, not of air, but of spirit. Then came the blazing thought, ‘You are a free man.’ I know not at all how long I remained in this state, but finally the Light and the ecstasy subsided. As I became quieter a great peace stole over me, and I became acutely conscious of a presence, which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘must be the great reality. The God of the preachers.’
“Wilson never drank again. He told Dr. Bob Smith, an alcoholic in Akron, Ohio, about his experience, and the doctor also quit drinking and began to pursue a ‘spiritual remedy’ for his own alcoholism. The two men, Bill W. and Dr. Bob, became the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Their twelve-step program, Parti notes, was originally based on these affirmations:
1) We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2) Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.
4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10) Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.
12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
“When I look at the twelve steps, I can’t help but think that Wilson’s encounter with the Light was similar to my own with the Being of Light. I also couldn’t help but think that he too was asked to devise a means of spiritual healing much like the one I was being asked to devise. Following my surgery, I realized my addiction to painkillers was abating. Soon I took less than what was prescribed and only as needed for my pelvic pain.
“I felt compelled to meditate after returning home from the hospital, and now I was doing it daily, sometime several times a day. One day when I was meditating, a deep sadness came over me, caused by some of the same concerns that had driven me into depression. I began to think about the money I had lost in the stock market in 1999 and wondered why I had put all of my capital at risk just to try to make more when what I had already made was more than I ever expected. I began to wonder why I had gotten prostate cancer. Had God given it to me? Was this karmic payback for something I had done? Would I ever feel good about myself again?
“Then both Michael and Raphael appeared. In their pleasant way, they calmed me down; telling me that ‘going off the track’ during meditation was common. When you meditate, you are supposed to let thoughts arise, but detach from them, let them float downstream in the river of life, said Raphael.
Yes, that’s what’s supposed to happen, agreed Michael. But that doesn’t happen to most people, at least not in the beginning.
Thoughts have thorns, just like cactus, said Raphael. They stick to you and they hurt. Sometimes they don’t detach as quickly as you would like, and they hurt even when they do.
“There were easy ways to conquer these depressing thoughts, said Michael. It was all a matter of changing perspective. To do that, he suggested I develop two opposing personalities, Poor Rajiv and Lucky Rajiv. Poor Rajiv is the man who is stressed out because he lost money in the stock market and can’t accept that the losses were caused by his greed. Then he got cancer, and with it came multiple surgeries with complications. Now he blames God for his problems instead of considering his own karma. Lucky Rajiv is that guy who has a chance to follow his dharma, his purpose, and doesn’t have a huge mortgage. His life is easier, and he can explore a new meaning of life, maybe even change the world.
The angels told me to ponder the question during meditation: Which one do I want to be today? Lucky Rajiv or Poor Rajiv? I realized I could change the story around the circumstances of my life. As Raphael said: You cannot prevent pain, but suffering is an option. All I had to do was change the perspective, and I didn’t have to suffer.
Rajiv Parti, Dying to Wake Up: A
Doctor’s Voyage into the Afterlife and the Wisdom He Brought Back (Atria
Books, 2016).
Your will be done . . .
You, who Jesus called father
Your will for all creation
A doing we can do
Will do
As in heaven . . .
Your eternal realm
No where or when, but real
Our home too
With you
On earth . . .
Here and now
Your will becoming our will
Amazing grace
Now we can see
And we will
The answer to Anderson’s question came in an astonishing way. He was treating Eunice, a patient in her late sixties, for diabetes and high blood pressure when she had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital in Nashville. Several hours later Anderson received a call from the treating physician in Nashville, Dr. Wong.
We took Eunice to the cath lab, Dr. Wong said. Everything was going well, and just as you suspected, she was having a large anterior myocardial infarction. She had a 99 percent blockage of the left anterior descending artery. We opened the vessel with the balloon and then . . .
“He paused. Everything he’d said up to that point made sense and frankly was what I expected to hear. But when he stopped mid-sentence, I wondered if something else was wrong.
Go on, I said.
We opened the vessel with the balloon and then, everything went south.
What happened?
She died on the table. I had a resident with me, and we worked on her for at least an hour. I was about to let her go, but my resident wanted to practice running a code, so I let him while I supervised.
What was the time of death?
Well, see, that’s the thing. An hour into the resident running the code, and two hours from the time she flat lined, her heart kicked in and started beating by itself.
Are you saying she’s alive?
I’m saying she was dead for two hours, and now she is alive.
What kind of condition is she in?
I have her on a vent in the ICU, and she’s in a coma. With that much time doing CPR, I’m really not sure how much functioning will come back.
Three days later Eunice awakened from her coma and asked to see Dr. Anderson. When he entered her room, he was surprised at how good she looked. “Her skin was radiant, her eyes sparkled, and she looked almost girlish, which no one had probably said about her for more than forty years.
Dr. Anderson! She said, reaching for my hand.
Hello, Eunice. How are you feeling?
Great, just great! She said with much more enthusiasm than I would have expected from a woman who had been legally dead only seventy-two hours earlier. Sit down. I have a story to tell you.
The last thing I remember was lying on the table while they did something with my heart. Then suddenly there was a lot of commotion. People were yelling and handing medical equipment back and forth. I knew they were working on my shell. They said that I died on the table—that I was dead for two hours! But I don’t remember it because I wasn’t there on that table. I was somewhere else where I was more alive than I’ve ever been. Everything was peaceful there and calm, very different from here. It was the exact opposite of the craziness that was going on where my body lay on that table. A sensation of total peace enveloped me, and I felt as though I were floating.
I didn’t feel any more pain. Even before my heart attack, I always had pain, what with the arthritis and the neuropathy. But now, I no longer had that burning in my legs; in fact, they felt strong. For the first time in three years, I stood up and walked without a wheelchair or a walker!
I walked down a path to a stream. I could feel its icy spray blowing on me as I passed. I stopped to take a drink, and the water was as cold and fresh as an Alaskan stream, but the water was sweet—it tasted like honey.
When I looked around, I saw an astounding array of colors, and the pigments seemed so concentrated! It was more colorful than anything I’d ever seen or imagined.
“By this time, one of the ICU nurses had entered and was listening too. Eunice started talking faster.
I walked around a bend in the path, and I saw an open field with the greenest grass—I’ve never seen that color of green before. Right in the middle of that meadow stood a horse-drawn carriage! My father loved horses. Seeing that beautiful animal reminded me of him.
Suddenly, my view was blocked. A crowd of people stood in front of the carriage. I looked closer, and I saw my father, my sweet mother, and my dear brother! They died years ago. Then I recognized other people in the crowd who had passed away decades ago. But when I saw them, it was as if no time had passed at all. Our spirits were united with an understanding that defied words. In fact, I’m not even sure we used words to communicate.
They all said they were doing great. They specifically asked me to tell you that what you’re doing here in Cheatham County needs to continue. They wanted to encourage you. I sat down with them in the grassy meadow. They’d prepared a picnic lunch for me, and you know what, Dr. Anderson? There was no diabetic food there! I could eat whatever I wanted!
“I smiled at the nurse. I knew how much Eunice must have enjoyed that. She hated having to watch her sugar intake.
Dr. Anderson, I’ve never felt that peaceful and content. It was like being snuggled in a velvet robe. I really wanted to stay there. But then, Jesus came and sat down beside me. He asked me if I could come back here for a while, so I could encourage others. He told me I wouldn’t have to stay long, and I would be able to come back soon. He said he wanted me to come back here for two reasons. The first one was to encourage you . . . to tell you that you are doing his will and should stay the course. I don’t know what that means, but that’s what he told me to tell you.
“I teared up; a minute later, I was crying. I knew what that meant. God wanted us to stay in Ashland City.
The second reason was to encourage my family and friends to believe that Jesus is real and that there truly is a heaven!
“I held her hand until she fell asleep. Then I turned off the lights and went to find Karen. She was in the lobby reading a magazine. She must have sensed my coming because she looked up as I came closer.
I can tell by the look on your face that this is a good one, she said.
“I burst into tears as I told her everything Eunice had said. I felt so honored and humbled to have received such a blessing of encouragement. It reminded me of the day I’d walked out of the Tennessee wilderness (both literally and figuratively) after my conversion dream. I’d felt the same way then. I knew there were people who did more for God, who were better Christians than I was, or who desperately needed to hear his voice because of something they were going through.
Why did he choose to send a message to me? I asked Karen.
“Her reply was simple. You’re his child.”
Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013), 221-229.
“The prayer seemed to lift me out of my chaotic environment. I took a deep breath and felt my heart slow ever so slightly as my hands grew steadier. Once again, I lifted the needle. This time in a quick downward motion, I stabbed the patient’s heart.
“Suddenly I felt a calming breeze. An air current from heaven seemed to blow all around me. Nonclotting blood rushed into the syringe, and as I held it in place, I looked up to the right and felt a slight brush of wind on my cheek. The ever-present veil—so thin, yet thick enough to separate us from the next world—was flowing freely in a heavenly breeze. Then I felt the warmth of his soul. Before anything else was said, before I looked at the machines, I knew. He was coming back.
A day later, Anderson visited DeWayne.
What’s up, Dr. Anderson? He said when I walked in.
Looks like you are!
Do you remember, Anderson asked, what happened the night they brought you to the ER?
A little, he said.
You were dead on arrival. You had no pulse, no blood pressure, and you weren’t breathing on your own.
I remember that, DeWayne said. But after I got to the hospital and you moved me onto that other bed in the room with all the bright lights, you took care of me, Doc.
You remember us moving you?
Yeah, sure, that was right before you stabbed me the first time.
You remember me stabbing you?
Yeah. Twice.
I was surprised by his recall. What else do you remember?
He described the nurse who had worked with the respiratory therapist and me. Doc, would you please tell them thank you for saving my life?
I was stunned at the clarity and detail of his memories.
Were you in pain at all?
No, I didn’t feel a thing, DeWayne said. But I was real scared.
I didn’t tell him that I was too.
But then I saw my granny.
You saw your granny? I asked. I tried to remember if I had seen her too. I’d talked to his mother, and there were other, much younger women in the waiting room when I’d spoken to her. But there wasn’t anyone that I would have considered old enough to be his grandmother.
That’s when I knew I was going to be all right.
When did you know? I was confused.
When I saw my granny, he repeated. She was sitting in the corner of the room, until you let her come over.
I let her come over?
Yeah, don’t you remember?
I didn’t, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. I’d had enough wow moments to know that God worked in some pretty unexpected ways.
I wanted to know more. What did your granny say? I asked.
She held my hand and said, “You’re going to be all right.” That’s when I knew I didn’t have to be afraid no more.
Do you remember what I was doing?
Oh, yeah, that’s when you were staring at something. It was up and to my right, kind of far off in the distance. It was like you were listening real hard for something.
I smiled. Heaven’s breath had been in the room that night, and we’d both experienced it differently. On my way out, I told one of the nurses what he’d said.
That’s odd, the nurse said.
That’s God, I said.
Later than day the nurse told Anderson she’d spoken with DeWayne’s mother. His mother said his grandmother had been dead for four years. She thought Granny must have visited DeWayne from the other side.
Anderson reflects on the meaning of this divine intervention. “I’ve spent a lot of hours marveling about what DeWayne and I each experienced that night in the ER. I don’t have all the answers, but what I’ve come to understand is that God sent DeWayne’s granny to be with him that night. Though his granny was dead, she’d been sent to restore DeWayne’s life and his spirit, just like my murdered cousins had done for me.
“It seems to me that, in rare cases, God allows dreams or visions of people we have loved, those who have gone on to the other side, to help us know and accomplish our purposes here on earth. During those moments when the veil blows freely, I know that God is at work.”
Reggie
Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The
True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter
(Tyndale, 2013), 137-144.
The painting of Jesus is from the Ethiopian Coptic Church community.
The brutal murder of six members of the Alday family, Reggie Anderson’s close relatives, devastated his childhood faith in God. Why? He screamed at God. Why did you do this? Over and over he screamed: Why did you let this happen, God. They loved you!
Karen, a wonderful woman he began to date while in medical school, made Christian faith a requirement for any long-term relationship. But Anderson wasn’t convinced, until he had what he calls “the dream that changed my life.”
While camping beside a beautiful falls, he read the copy of Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis that Karen had given him. “Finally!” Anderson writes, “Someone had articulated the unresolved questions I had with Christianity. Lewis had also believed in the promises of science and the prophets of logic and knowledge; yet he had returned to love and defend the God I had grown up with. How? I tried to understand how he had reached that conclusion. Could I come to that same understanding?
Before falling asleep, Anderson read through the Gospel of John, which Karen had recommended and Lewis mentions in Mere Christianity. “Without warning,” Anderson writes, “I fell into a deep sleep. But this slumber was different from any sleep I’d ever experienced. My mind was tumbling, free falling, like the waterfall nearby. An overwhelming peace filled me, and I felt everything was right with the world.
“When my mind stopped tumbling, I opened my eyes to the most fantastical countryside imaginable: everything was vivid and radiant. All of my senses were finely tuned, like I had awakened in some enhanced version of reality. In front of me, a picturesque meadow was filled with vibrantly colored wildflowers. Pops of yellow, orange, red, blue, and indigo swayed with the breeze like living rainbows. The green was the lushest green I’d ever laid eyes on; the hue so saturated, it seemed like a new color to me. The splendor before me was stunning!
“I wanted to breathe in the view. As I did, I inhaled the most fragrant scent, so light and pleasing—like a mixture of citrus and lilac. I held my breath, allowing it to cleanse my insides and open my mind. I heard a trickling noise behind me and turned to see a running stream. Crystal clear blue water flowed over shiny rocks lining the bed and made a tranquil babbling sound. I moved toward the stream, and I felt an icy but refreshing spray, almost like the feeling I got as a boy when I opened the freezer door on a hot Alabama day. The flowing water was a glassy sapphire blue, but surprisingly light and clear when I scooped it into my cupped hands.
“Everything felt so real, more intense and tangible than my ordinary life. My senses seemed to awaken and open like a flower to the sun. I could see, hear, touch, smell, and feel things as never before. I didn’t feel like I was in a dream; I felt like this was the real life I’d always been searching for. This was more real than my life.
“I didn’t have time to think about how I’d gotten there because I heard an unmistakable voice calling me from the distance. It was the voice of someone whom I had once loved and who still loved me. It didn’t make an audible sound; instead, it resonated inside me and echoed outside, as if I’d heard it with my heart, or maybe my soul. It was easily the most compelling, yet comforting, voice I’d ever heard.
“I spun to my right to glance at the person who had spoken to my heart, and I saw a great crowd of people moving toward me. As I scanned the crowd, a cool breeze engulfed me. That’s when I recognized them. Jimmy, Jerry, Mary, Ned, Chester, and Aubrey! [RT: The six members of the Alday family who had been murdered.]
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there was no mistaking them. They looked ecstatic. I’d never seen anyone as happy as they were. They didn’t speak with words, but they seemed to know how much I had struggled with their deaths, and how that trauma had put up a barrier between God and me. In the most kind and loving way possible, they communicated that they weren’t the obstacles to my faith. They were there to lift the burden I had been carrying around for so long.
“They were so real, so present, and so very joyful. I had never seen such bliss radiate from a person’s face, but the essence of who they were was still apparent. Jimmy and Jerry even seemed to tease each other the way brothers do—in the same way the three of us had done at the farmers market. I wanted to run to them, to join them, and to live in this paradise with them. I wanted this to be my home too.
“Then I saw him. He inhabited more of a presence in the midst of the crowd than a human form, yet he definitely had human qualities. I couldn’t identify his race; he seemed to be a composite of all races, or possibly of a race I’d never seen before. Likewise, he appeared ageless—of every age and none, at the same time. He was unlike anyone I had ever seen before. Even his long hair defied description. It was at once silver, golden, and onyx-colored as it moved in the light. There was almost a glow from behind him, creating the effect of a halo.
Reggie, why are you running from me? Your friends are here with me in paradise; you can stop running.
“That’s when I knew. It was Jesus.
“He communicated with such authority. Yet I couldn’t see his mouth moving—I somehow intuited his words. As he spoke, I noticed that the light behind him glowed brighter. His eyes shone like the cool waters of the stream between us. His smile was so reassuring, like the one a loving mother gives to her baby. And inside me, I could feel the warmth of his love wrapping itself around my heart and my soul.
I am the one who came for you, he said.
“Immediately, I knew what he meant. For more than seven years, I had been wandering aimlessly in a spiritual wilderness. He had come to rescue me from the hate and anger that had trapped me in the wasteland and to bring me back to the faith of my youth.
I have a plan for you, but you need to stop running.
“I was in awe of him and knew that whatever he said, whatever he asked, I would obey him completely. But my instant devotion was challenged by his next words. You’re going to marry Karen, and together you will have four children. You will be a doctor and practice medicine in rural Tennessee.
“His final words to me were: All I have told you will come to pass. All you have to do is trust in me and in my words.
Anderson did marry Karen, and they moved to Tennessee where he began to work as a surgeon in a hospital serving a rural community. Over time, they had four children. The remainder of Anderson’s book is about his experiences with dying patients.
Reggie Anderson, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale, 2013).
Dr. Reggie Anderson writes from the perspective of a firm Christian faith. He describes, however, his loss of faith as a young man and how the love he shared with the woman who became his wife—and having what he describes as a very powerful dream—renewed his childhood faith.
Anderson begins his book with his first experience as a resident caring for a dying patient. “Throughout medical school I had taken care of dying patients, but this was the first time that I, as the senior resident, would be the one in charge when a patient died. I didn’t know what to expect.
Dr. Anderson, the elderly woman began, her voice starting to fade. Will you hold my hand? I’m going to see Jesus, and I need an escort.
“That night, I experienced the veil parting—the veil that separates this life from the next. As I held the dying woman’s hands, I felt the warmth of her soul pass by my cheek when it left her body, swept up by an inexplicably cool breeze in an otherwise stagnant room. I smelled the familiar fragrance of lilac and citrus, and I knew the veil was parting to allow her soul to pass through.
“Since that first patient, I’ve walked with countless others to the doorstep of heaven and watched them enter paradise. On many occasions, as I held hands with the dying, God allowed me to peer into heaven’s entryway where I watched each patient slip into the next world.
“I’ve sensed Jesus on the other side, standing in heaven’s foyer, welcoming the dead who are made whole again. I’ve glimpsed surreal colors and sights and heard sounds more intense than I’ve ever experienced in this world. I’ve inhaled the scents of lilac, citrus, freshly carved cedar, and baking bread—more fragrant than I ever thought possible.
“Sometimes I’ve even witnessed patients leave this world and come back. As they’ve shared their stories with me, I’ve often remembered the time early in my life when God allowed me to step into heaven’s foyer, even though I no longer believed he was real.
“The one thing these experiences have in common is the intensity of the sights, sounds, fragrances, and feelings that I sensed. Heaven is more real than anything we experience here, and the sense of peace, joy, and overwhelming love is beyond description.”
Reggie Anderson with Jennifer Schuchmann, Appointments with Heaven: The True Story of a Country Doctor’s Healing Encounters with the Hereafter (Tyndale Momentum, 2013), 4-5.
Alexander T. Englert, “We'll meet again,” Aeon , Jan 2, 2024, https://aeon.co/essays/kurt-godel-his-mother-and-the-a...
