Minutes From Death - Christianity Today

Mike was a troubled, homeless man with few friends. For several months he visited our church’s food ministry, which served meals to more than 50 homeless people each weekday.

Mike wanted me to give him a ride to visit some relatives’ graves at a nearby cemetery. In fact, Mike had asked me for the ride several times that summer, but I had been putting him off.

One afternoon I was about to leave for lunch when Mike asked again. Why don’t I just get rid of this commitment now, so I can get on to other things? I thought. So we got into my car.

After we visited the gravesite, I asked Mike where he’d like to be dropped off. He named a rock quarry that was on the way back.

As I pulled over next to the quarry, Mike asked me to pray for him. I put the car in park, and then he asked, “Would you put your arm around my shoulder while we pray?” I’m accustomed to laying hands on those I pray for, so I put my hand on his shoulder and closed my eyes.

According to the doctors, it was a miracle I ever opened them again.

“You need to die”

A sudden movement startled me. And then I felt my neck and torso awash in warm liquid. When I opened my eyes, I was stunned by the blood. Everywhere. I looked at the car, at my hands, my shirt, covered in blood.

Then I turned and saw Mike pulling back his hand to strike another blow with a knife. I lunged for his hand to stop his swing. He kicked at me to free his arm. We wrestled in the car, battling over his lethal weapon.

I remember thinking, I need to get this fight out of the car, into the street. Maybe someone will see us. The door sprang open and we tumbled out the driver’s side into the street. The knife fell away.

But Mike continued to hit me. We wrestled. We boxed. My shirt, shoes, and undershirt came off in the struggle, and still I continued to gush blood from a knife wound stretching four inches across my neck.

He tried to pull me into the woods, away from the street. And when I used a high school wrestling hold to subdue him, he picked up a rock and bashed me in the head.

“Why are you doing this?” I cried. Then, oddly, in the midst of our struggle, I told him, “Mike, you need to repent of this!”

His eyes were dark and vacant, filled with murder. “And you need to die,” he said.

But when a truck drove by our car, my attacker bolted into the woods. Another motorist drove by, looked at me, and left—to call the police, I hoped.

I slumped to the ground. I had lost far too much blood, and I figured my time was short.

Life flashes

As I sat there, knowing I was bleeding to death, my mind wandered. Do I have enough life insurance for my family? Will I bleed more quickly if I move? Why didn’t I give a better good-bye to the kids this morning?

They say your life flashes before your eyes in the moments near death, and it does. I felt the Spirit of God searching through my days, looking at my life through the lens of eternity. The moments were brief, but I sensed the Lord doing so much work in me. It was like a spiritual download that had to be opened one file at a time over the weeks and months that followed. Only now, looking back, can I put words to what I felt.

I saw myself standing before the judgment throne of Christ. And I knew from the look in his eyes that he was asking me, “How much love did I pour out on you? How much of it flowed out of you to others?”

And I was convicted. What about all these things? Sermons, ministries, good deeds? But all he wanted to know about was love. And I had very little love to show for my life.

I had flashbacks of listening to my wife, but not hearing her heart. Of competing against my fellow pastors, instead of carrying them in my prayers. Of almost telling my teenage son I loved him, but leaving the words stuck in my throat.

I realized I had been consumed with the busyness of pastoring. My ministry had lost its Christ-focus and was driven instead by a hundred other demands. Now, before eternity’s penetrating gaze, none of that mattered. God wasn’t searching me for duties done in his name; he was searching me for love.

I wanted to say, “No, Lord, not now! Give me another chance to come to you later with a basketful of love. Not with this pea-sized heart I have now.”

Even as the Spirit was bringing me under such heavy conviction, he also gave me a foretaste of the love he was awakening within me. As Mike slashed me with deadly intent, God moved me to love my attacker. Why else would I call Mike to repentance as he was beating me?

In the middle of our fight, I was given peace that expelled the anger I normally would have felt. I fought violently to preserve my life, but not to harm Mike. I’ve been more angry at my children spilling milk than I was at my attacker that day.

I apologized later to my wife. “I’m sorry I didn’t put up a very good fight.”

Though heavily convicted of my past lovelessness, I found hope that God was going to make me into a new man. I’ve since realized that when I allow God to move within me, he enables me to love anyone, even my mortal enemies.

That realization has since changed how I pray, how I parent, and how I pastor.

Shielded by musk ox

A new heart is little good if there’s no blood to pump through it, and I began to worry that I wouldn’t have any left by the time help came. Or would it come? I wasn’t sure the passing motorist actually went for help, or if he just went.

So I staggered into my car and drove three-quarters of a mile to the first public place I could find. I parked the car and laid on the horn until help arrived.

The ambulance that carried me to the hospital called ahead to assemble a team of doctors to treat me. I had lost nearly 20 percent of my blood.

Mike’s knife had sliced between two of my vertebrae and nicked a minor artery in my spine, but miraculously missed my spinal cord, vocal cords, and jugular. I was in the emergency room for more than eight hours.

The healing I was receiving during six days in the hospital was more than physical. Immediately after the attack, I felt defiled, as though I had been dropped in the pool of Satan’s schemes and emerged still covered in his slime. And I was too weak to shake it off.

One of the paramedics that treated me was Jim, a man from our church. I asked him to pray for me. And as he did, the other medical personnel backed away and gave Jim the time and space to minister to me.

As Jim prayed, I could feel the love of God piercing the darkness that I had been through. It birthed hope in me, hope that I might live, and hope that I might get my chance to love again.

Later two visitors from my church sneaked past the ER nurse to see me. They found me covered in blood, sweat, and even vomit from a brutal test that was necessary to survey the damage, but they came to me, loved me, and told me they were praying for me.

As a pastor, it’s my inclination to always want to give to others. But lying helpless in that hospital, I could only receive. I discovered, as a broken man, physically and spiritually, how powerful, how glorious, and how healing the love of the Body of Christ can be.

Earlier that year, I had been teaching on community, building an analogy from the musk ox. While most herd animals leave their weak and wounded behind, the musk ox form a protective circle. They stand shoulder to shoulder, with their heads and horns outside the circle, and the weaker oxen hidden inside, shielding them from attacking wolves.

After the attack, one of my elders said to me, “Tom, when you talked about the musk ox at the beginning of the year, it was all theory; but now it’s becoming reality.”

In the weeks that followed, I received thousands of prayers, flowers, letters, cards, and e-mails. Several pastors came to see me in the hospital. One pastor prayed that God would give me a stronger voice through my healing.

I wondered how I could return to our ministry to the homeless. Could I get past the fear to reach out with the love of Christ? At one point, it seemed that stitching my throat together was the easier part of my recovery.

In the midst of my pain, the Holy Spirit brought to my mind a line from a Fanny Crosby hymn:

Down in the human heart,
crushed by the tempter,
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore;
Touched by a loving hand,
wakened by kindness,
Chords that are broken will vibrate once more.

I prayed that song a thousand times in the days after I was attacked. And God answered my prayer.

My first love

My daughter said to me recently, “Dad, you’re starting to show some gray hairs.”

“You’d have some gray, too,” I said, “if you’d seen the ghost of Christmas past.” Through the attack, I felt like God gave me the chance to look back at my life and ministry in the light of eternity.

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I saw how loveless I had been. And it has changed me. My church has a new pastor.

I’m much more willing now to reach out and hug someone in my congregation. I’m more aware of the need for gentle and encouraging words. I’m no longer afraid to weep with compassion in the pulpit.

I was preoccupied tending to ministry demands. I worried about people leaving the church, and about how smoothly the service ran. Now I’m only passionate about two things—growing our love for God and growing our love for others.

One way I’ve discovered a new love emerging is when I make hospital calls. I now stop before I enter a hospital room and do three things:

I check my motivation. Am I here out of duty, or am I like Jesus, moved with compassion before administering healing?

I ask God to fill me with his love. I recognize I don’t have great reservoirs of love, so I confess it, and God gives me new love for others.

And I ask God to be actively present, to minister through me.

When I’m in hospitals now, I no longer depend on my training or experience; I seek a fresh dependence on the Spirit.

God has shown me his ministry of love and invited me to leave my ministry to join him in his.

Beginning again

After fleeing through the woods, Mike apparently noticed that he was covered in my blood. Somewhere he found a stream or pool to wash in and continued his flight, which led him to another cemetery.

There caretakers noticed the bedraggled and bruised man sneaking through the graveyard. They called the police, who were already combing the area. They caught him before he left the cemetery.

Back at the hospital, the Cook County district attorney came to visit me. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Mr. Severson,” the D.A. said after seeing my wounds. Then as he left, he said to a policeman, “This will be attempted murder.”

Mike is still jailed on a $1 million bond and awaiting trial.

A couple of months after the attack, I resumed my duties as pastor. The church had given me a couple of months off to heal and sort things out.

One day shortly after returning, I was walking into a Wal-Mart and mentally going through my to-do list—this person is struggling, this ministry needs more staff. I felt the burdens of ministry encroaching again. They were all good things, but they were stifling the precious lessons of love I had learned.

Then I felt the Holy Spirit speaking to my heart: “Tom, you’ve loved me in death. Now, just love me in life.”

Tom Severson pastors Elgin Vineyard in Elgin, Illinois.