After an enforced season of pain thawed a frozen faith, Jeff Lucas has been inspired to make a New Year’s resolution
The doctor looked serious.
“Jeff, I must warn you that the surgery you need calls for a two-week recovery period. It will be extremely painful.” I nodded and signed the consent form. “Any allergies?” he asked, a question usually put to me in restaurants. Only to pain, I thought.
As the day of the surgery dawned, I told God that I wanted to use my enforced surgical slowdown as a spiritual retreat. This was no casual request. The last five years had been brutal, leaving my faith not dead, but somewhat dormant, hibernating beneath the arctic frost of a seemingly never-ending winter. I still believed, but faith had turned into frozen theory. And so I prayed, mumbling my desperation to see Jesus move, act, speak, nudge – anything, really, that might show me he was alive on that grey Wednesday rather than just on that Easter Sunday morning two millennia earlier.
The promised two weeks of excruciating agony stretched into a full month. Here, I fear that some will tag me as a pathetic male; hearing of my discomfort, some of our female friends gave me that facial expression that says: “But you haven’t given birth, now, have you?” Indeed, I had not, but my screaming was probably heard on Jupiter.
Yet in the midst of it all, there was a moment when I sensed God speaking. My doctor told me that taking four warm salt baths daily would be helpful for healing. That month I bathed around 100 times, making me extremely clean, if rather wrinkly.
It happened during what was likely my 35th soaking. I heard God whisper: “I have something to say to you about warm bath water.” It was not exactly an epic announcement. I sat there for a couple of minutes, waiting. Perhaps the Lord might part the waters of my bath, like Evan Almighty’s soup. Wondering if what I thought was God was, in reality, caused by pain medication, I exited the bath, dried off and picked up a random book that had been left nearby.
I flicked it open, and five minutes after hearing that whisper, my eyes fell upon these words from Brennan Manning: “The most important thing that ever happens in prayer is letting ourselves be loved by God. It’s like slipping into a tub of hot water and letting God’s love wash over us and fold us…the awareness of being loved brings a touch of lightness and a tint of brightness, and sometimes, for no apparent reason, a smile plays at the corner of your mouth.”
The thaw had begun, a beautiful, tender springtime.
There are some biblical truths that can be difficult to believe, like the thought of the Alpha and the Omega appearing in a virgin’s womb. Raising stinky Lazarus. Making the sun stand still. But I’m convinced that the hardest truth for us to wrap our faith around is this: that God loves…me. He loves the world, sure. And, of course, he loves that keen chap who, Sunday by Sunday, raises his hands in worship. But he loves…me? I know me all too well. And you know you. Can God really know – and still love us?
Wonderfully, he does. And so my single New Year resolution for 2026 is to rest, revel in and respond to the love of God – and pass it around to others. Or as Paul, murderer turned apostle, put it: “[May] you, being rooted and established in love…have power…to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:17-19).
Happy new year. But happy or not, this much is certain: Yes, Jesus loves us. The Bible tells us so.
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