If you spend any amount of time viewing videos on social media, you’re familiar with the phrase “wait for it.” Usually, this phrase is found in videos that run for more than thirty seconds. A text box appears that says “watch what happens next,” and then, a few seconds later, you see the words “Wait for it.” The point is to get the viewer to watch the remainder of the video and not to bail out before it is over. If you do, you might miss the best part.
So it is with life. At the moment, I’m preparing for a colonoscopy, and believe me, I’ve thought of bailing out more than a few times (basically every twenty minutes for the last ten hours). But if I do, I will never discover what I hope to know: reassurance that I don’t have any cancer in my colon. At my age, and given my genetics and lifestyle choices, cancer is a possibility.
We’ve all been there
Wanting to give up, to quit when things seem difficult, is a feeling many of us experience. I’ve seen this in hundreds of my students who wasted the better part of a semester skipping class or not studying to prepare for quizzes and exams. Other people lose their jobs and struggle just to feed their families, let alone pay their credit cards and student loans. They feel a crushing weight on their shoulders or a squeezing sensation in their head or chest, not to be confused with a heart attack.
If you’ve ever seen an old television western, you might have seen some settlers from a wagon train fighting off hundreds of Indians, hoping for the cavalry to show up at the last minute.
The words we call “stress” or “pressure” are identical to the Greek word thlíbō, a word used to describe the process by which juice was squeezed out of grapes in the production of wine. Each turn of the screw squeezes the grapes even more, much like how every day brings a student closer to the end of a semester when they are failing, or how each phone call from a collection agency weighs heavily on a borrower in default. In fact, thlíbō can refer to “pressure,” being “squashed,” or being “hemmed in.” People at concerts and football matches sometimes die from the crush of the crowd that panics when there is danger.
The image of the word, as used in ancient writings by Greek and Roman authors such as Homer and Plutarch, connotes being “embattled,” “surrounded,” or “squeezed.” Trench speaks of the punishments used in early Britain when someone accused of a crime would have heavy stones placed on their chest until they suffocated. More on this can be found here.
How does this apply to real life? I want to offer a number of examples, starting with two famous battles: the Siege of Vienna (1683) and Little Round Top (1863).
The Siege of Vienna
Christianity was repeatedly threatened during the Middle Ages from the spread of Islam at the point of a sword. The Muslims had occupied Spain for almost eight centuries, until the time of Columbus. Muslim cavalry were less than a week’s hard ride from Wittenberg, Germany, in Martin Luther’s Day
The Islamic Ottoman Empire saw Vienna as a golden apple. Strategically, it was the doorway to Western Europe. They laid siege to the city in 1529 but were unsuccessful. However, under Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha, they tried again in 1683 with a much larger army but were once again repulsed, thanks to Polish King John III Sobieski and his Winged Hussars, who performed the impossible and captured the high ground, cannon and all. The Ottoman army had to content itself with the thousands of people from the countryside outside Vienna whom they had taken as slaves. But Christianity was saved.
Colonel Joshua Chamberlain
Joshua Chamberlain, 34, knew this at Gettysburg, PA, on July 2, 1863. His regiment, the 20th Maine, was the linchpin in the North’s attempt to hold the line against Lee and Longstreet in the Civil War. They placed Colonel Chamberlain and his men on top of a hill called “Little Round Top” to prevent an overwhelming number of Confederate forces from seizing the hill and collapsing the northern positions. After successfully resisting numerous charges up the hill from the southern forces, Chamberlain’s men were out of ammunition. They were forbidden to retreat. So, Chamberlain ordered them to fix bayonets, and he charged down the hill toward the advancing Confederate forces under Major General John B. Hood and Major General George Sykes. The southern soldiers were stunned by the spectacle and fled down the hill with the bodies of members of the Army of Northern Virginia scattered about the ground. Many surrendered, and the North carried the day. The entire engagement that day pitted 3,000 Union forces from the Army of the Potomac against almost 5,000 Rebel soldiers. A charge was the last thing anyone expected of them. Yet, Chamberlain had determined to see it through rather than surrender, and he carried the day.
Alexander Fleming
Alexander Fleming was a Scottish bacteriologist researching bacteria in the hopes of discovering a cure for bacterial infections. He worked tirelessly on this for several years. Earlier in the last century, he inadvertently discovered a treatment for bacterial infections. According to the citation accompanying his Nobel Prize:
“In 1928, while working on the influenza virus, he observed that mold had developed accidentally on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mold had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He was inspired to further experiment, and he found that a mold culture prevented the growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. He named the active substance penicillin.”
In other words, there was a raunchy dish left unwashed and unsterilized lying around his lab when he left on holiday. When he returned, he discovered something that had been growing—something he had long sought after. As he recalls it:
“When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.”
How could this be seen as anything but a gift? A ripened peach that fell into his lap, in spite of all the groundwork he laid down earlier in his pursuit of a cure.
James Lovell, Fred Haise, and John “Jack” Swigert
These were the three astronauts on the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. On April 13, 1970, at 10:07 p.m. EST, about three-quarters of the way to the moon, there was an explosion onboard the service module of the spacecraft as an electric wire with faulty insulation came into contact with oxygen. However, as far as the astronauts knew, they might have been struck by a meteor. The explosion caused precious oxygen to vent into space, and the astronauts were in real danger of never being able to return to Earth! Life support, power, propulsion, and the computers needed to determine the correct trajectory to return to Earth were all lost, assuming
the ship even held together that long. No one could blame them if they panicked or just gave up. But they approached their situation patiently and logically, guided by the expertise of engineers back in Houston. The best chance of a safe return to Earth required that the damaged spacecraft continue on its trip to the moon and then use the moon’s gravity to “slingshot” back to Earth. While the crew was able to conserve enough oxygen for the return home by moving from module to module, there was a problem with removing carbon dioxide, which is as deadly as a lack of oxygen. Eventually, the service module was jettisoned, and the spacecraft landed safely back on our planet using the command module. But it was “touch and go” all the way. A trip that seems almost humanly impossible became even more daunting because of an explosion in space.
Juliane Koepcke
On December 24, 1971, seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke was a passenger on LANSA Flight 508, a commercial plane flying over the Amazon Basin. The plane broke up in a thunderstorm, and of the 92 passengers onboard, who were killed, only Juliane survived (fourteen of the 92 passengers were alive when they hit the
ground but died before they could be rescued). Juliane had fallen 10,500 feet into the Amazon rainforest without a parachute. She suffered numerous injuries and broken bones but survived, mostly because she was still strapped to her seat, which appeared to have broken her fall. Additionally, her seat was attached to two others, which might have produced a drag effect on her fall, complemented by updrafts from the storm itself.
Hannah
Hannah was a woman mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible. Whether through sterility or infertility, Hannah could not have children. In Old Testament times, being barren was often seen as a mark of disgrace by other women in the community. Yet, Hannah had not done anything to cause this, as revealed in Scripture. In desperation, she promised God that if she bore a son, she would dedicate him to the service of God. She got pregnant shortly after, and her son, Samuel—one of the most important prophets in the History of Israel—faithfully completed his service to his God, to whom he owed his life.
David
David lived during Samuel’s lifetime. He is introduced as a shepherd boy who has been given charge of his family’s sheep. This responsibility includes keeping them from wandering off, getting hurt, or being killed by hungry beasts, notably wolves, jackals, hyenas, and some big cats. In fact, Samuel anointed David as the future king of Israel. David rose to prominence by slaying the giant Philistine Goliath with a single, well-placed stone launched from his sling.
While David generally did what God asked and lived a righteous life (as much as any mortal can), he still fell prey to some of the same traps that we do today. That he would admit his sins to God and that God would forgive him is something that gives Christians hope today. When he confronted Goliath, he, like Chamberlain, faced an almost insurmountable foe, but he waited for his opportunity and then struck with all that he had.
Faster horses
As far as Fleming goes, he seems to have fallen into the common trap of thinking too rigidly according to orthodox science. I’m reminded of something Henry Ford once said, whether he actually said it or whether someone else did; it is nevertheless telling. When asked why he (Ford) did not consult the public about what they wanted as the next generation of travel beckoned, he replied that had he asked the masses, they would have responded that they wanted “faster horses.” In other words, they could not fathom any revolutionary innovation or design without clinging to what they already knew. This tendency to hold on to the past probably holds us back.
2.0
For those readers who are Christian, as well as for those who are not but want a Christian perspective on this, please read on. In II Corinthians 1:4, Paul writes that God “… comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” The word “trouble” is a derivative of “thlíbō,” as discussed above. In verses 8 and 9, Paul writes:
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
Commentators do not agree about what St. Paul refers to, since the word thlípseōs can encompass everything from being beaten by a mob to being arrested and tortured. However, many suppose Paul is referring to a physical illness or injury so severe that he barely survived. Perhaps this was related to his “thorn in the flesh” mentioned in II Corinthians 12:7-10. In both cases, Paul makes an inverse inference: namely, that the weaker and more helpless we are, the more powerful God is in our lives. If we win the lottery jackpot and think we’re at the top of our game—believing our life is assured and our future is a rosy done deal—then there is little that God can or will do at that moment if disaster strikes. If we are proud and arrogant, we completely lack the humility, appreciation, and dependence that God so desires to see in our lives.
No doubt, Joshua Chamberlain saw himself as a competent warrior moving up in rank as he became more experienced. He was as devout as anyone might be back then and undoubtedly said or participated in a prayer before battle. But the faster his regiment went through their ammunition and the more the rebels charged, the more natural it became for him to panic, and his spirit cried out for God to deliver him and his men that day.
When Juliane Koepcke finally reached the end of her two-mile free fall through a ferocious storm and assessed her condition, she understood that her life was spared but that she was not literally “out of the woods yet.” She might be the next meal for any one of a number of predators.
And what of the fourteen passengers who were likewise alive when they hit the ground, but whose injuries were much more severe than Juliane’s? Why did this teenager survive and live to old age while thirteen others perished? My answer is, I just don’t know. Nor do I understand why someone might jump ten feet out of a burning building onto the ground and die from the fall while this young woman fell ten thousand feet or more and survived. We appear to have different destinies, though I cannot say why. But we are dealt a hand of cards when we are born, and that is what we play to the best of our abilities and with thanks in our hearts for the opportunities that our Creator provided us.
Remember that sometimes the most eloquent and heartfelt prayers only have a few words. Regardless, God is listening.
