Article June 4, 2001 Issue

For the glory of God

Anne Jesper

In the summer of 1988 my husband and I took my dad on holiday to Side, a seacoast town in southern Turkey. We arrived at our hotel in the evening. Early the next morning, my husband and I went to Dad's room to take him to breakfast. But he wasn't there. Thinking he might have gone for a swim, we walked down to the beach to look for him. There, a tourist told us that a man had gone swimming, gotten into trouble in the water, and had been taken to hospital. (We learned later that a doctor had tried and failed to resuscitate my dad.)

We then spoke with the hotel manager, who offered to take me to the hospital, some 20 miles away. While I was being driven to the hospital, I started thinking about his age (he was quite elderly) and wondered if maybe it was just his time. My husband, who was not a student of Christian Science, had recently undergone major surgery and was recovering. I felt an assurance that it was not God's will for him to be deprived of his holiday. I then remembered the Bible story in which Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. According to a Bible verse from that account, Jesus said, "This sickness is not untodeath, but for the glory of God" (John 11:4). That idea—that this was not about death, but about glorifying God—gave me a feeling of utter calm.

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