Resurrections Still Happen

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. It's a time of preparation before Easter when out of love for the world, God sacrificed His son Jesus who took the punishment for all our sins, died on a cross so that we would not perish but instead be given eternal life. Three days later on Easter, He was resurrected from the dead. In the Bible, we read about a number of others who were also raised from the dead (unlike Jesus all of them eventually died a second final death). Remember Elijah raising the son of the widow at Zarephath (I Kings 17:22), Elisha raising the Shunammite's son (2 Kings 4:34), Jesus raising Lazarus, Jairus' daughter and the only son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:15). And who can forget Paul raising the sleepy teen Eutychus (Acts 20:9-10) who fell out the window and died during a long sermon?

I don't tend to think about the possibility of someone being raised from the dead or a resurrection happening these days. Yet just as Elisha "prayed to the Lord...got on the bed and lay upon the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands.... and the boy's body grew warm" God raised a young girl from the dead while I was at Nkhoma. As it is written in Hebrews 11:35, "Women received back their dead, raised to life again."

She arrived on the ward from the outpatient department, without a pulse or respirations. We immediately started CPR, gave a bolus of fluids, glucose and epinephrine. Blood had been ordered but had not arrived. No one knew when she had stopped breathing or how long she had been without oxygen. The anxious mother stood nearby watching as we ran for equipment, felt for a pulse, gave chest compressions, felt for a pulse and gave breathes to the child with an ambu bag trying to assure oxygenation.  After about thirty minutes Dr Sohil, a volunteer 3rd year pediatric resident from California said he felt a pulse. Although I had been praying continuously and asking for a miracle, I was surprised. Yet the heart rate registered over 230 on the oxygen saturation monitor.  Still I thought her long term survival was unlikely. There were no ventilators and if she failed to breathe for herself there was no hope. We had endotracheal tubes but with only two nurses and 60-80 patients it would have to be family bagging so we never intubated anyone. But then she began to take breathes and eventually we stopped assisting altogether. A day or two later on rounds, I told the nurse to tell her mother she could move to another section of the ward away from the oxygen concentrators since her daughter no longer required oxygen. I recalled her arrival on the ward and said to the nurse and resident, "You know this was a resurrection. She was dead. No heart beat and no respirations for at least thirty minutes. But, God has something planned for her life. Every one of her days was written in his book before there was even one, and it was not time for her to die that day." The nurse stopped and said we have to give this testimony to her mother and translated my words into Chichewa. "We need to give thanks and praise to God for what He has done."

Luke 7:22 "... the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor."