Hearing the apostle Paul’s words in a hospital stroke unit

“Like a bolt out of the blue,” the neurologist said to me, stricken as I lay in the intensive care unit. “That’s why we call it a stroke.” Suddenly “struck down”—in this respect similar to what befell Paul on the road to Damascus, unanticipated and without forewarning. In those trying moments, how often this Paul appropriated that one! I held onto especially a snippet of my ordination sermon text from many years before, though I was fully aware of the gap between Paul’s sense of persecution from without and mine of injury from within: “struck down but not destroyed.” 

I was at a theological conference when it happened, descending a staircase. Construction was going on outside, with a huge concrete pumping machine at work; I turned back to look at this technological marvel through the glass walls and collapsed on the staircase. Dazed, I was helped to my feet. I thought I had missed my step, fallen, and struck my jaw on the handrail. I stammered that I thought I’d gotten a concussion. Unbelievably in hindsight, I walked all the way down the staircase until those around me forced me to sit down; through the fog I saw that they were concerned at my appearance.

As the ambulance sped me to the hospital, the medic attending me said, “I hate to tell you this, buddy, but I think you’re having a stroke.”