Thoughts from Victor

Getting Well Again
April 1987

After you get sick somtimes recovery is quick, sometimes it is slow and sometimes it is impossible but there can always be reason for hope. Getting well again is the hope for us all despite the fact that sometimes the only relief from the pain of life is death.

A second round with that awesome disease called a heart attack taught me no new lessons about getting well again but it certainly reinforced the lessons I learned the first time around. Getting well again takes energy, spirit and desire based on the great hope of us all to live a good life and to die loved. As Christians we define the good life as a life of good based on Christ's teachings. once you have bought into Christi's prescription for the good life you are assured of dying loved.

John wrote in his Gospel that there was a man who waited for thirty-eight years at the porticoes of the pool of Behtsatha for a miracle so he could get well again. (John 5:2-9) He was sitting there like someone waiting for a winning lottery ticket but having no money with which to buy the ticket. His words to Christ were "Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled, and while I am going another steps down before me." Then Christ asked, "Do you want to be healed?"

Thirty-eight years is an awfully long time for someone to wait for the healing grace of God's love yet it was worth it to this man by the pool and it will be worth it to all of us.

My recovery has been blessedly short or so it seems to me. I'm feeling so much better every day and every time I go through the Cardiac rehab program of exercise that I feel surely that I am loved by God. I feel loved by God even though I know there is permanent damage that will never go away. I can live with it as long as God lives with me and in me.

We have no folllow up on the life of the man who took up his pallet and walked after thirty-eight years of illness but we may guess with all expectation of it being the truth that he died knowing he was loved by God through Jesus Christ.

I believe a great part of getting well again is knowing that God lvoes me and loves you. That can put a lot of hope in your pockets and you may always feel rich. Your chances of getting well again no matter what the odds are still greater than the odds in any lottery.

Victor Vernon Victoria, 'Getting Well Again' Newsletter (Goldfield, IA: The United Presbyterian Chruch, 1987), frontispiece.