Walking Towards Hope

Paul Beckingham

Description

The true and moving story of Paul Beckingham, a faithful, committed missionary serving God the best way he knew how, who without warning is in a life-threatening accident in Kenya. A serious brain injury robbed him of everything – even his personality. Theological arguments failed him in his time of brokenness. It was only God’s personal gracious presence, his warmth, and his love that satisfied his heart in the end. This is a true story that will leave you believing.

Informations

• Publié par: Castle Quay Books
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781894860581
• Langue: English

Extrait

Walking Towards Hope: Experiencing Grace in a Time of Brokenness
Copyright ©2005 Paul Beckingham
Second Printing 2008
All rights reserved
Printed in Canada
International Standard Book Number 13: 978-1-894860-24-6 (paperback edition)
International Standard Book Number 10: 1-894860-24-1 (paperback edition)
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-894860-58-1 (electronic edition)
Published by:
Castle Quay Books
1307 Wharf Street, Pickering, Ontario, L1W 1A5
Tel: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]
www.castlequaybooks.com
Copy-editing by Janet Diamond
Cover Design by John Cowie, eyetoeye design
Printed at Essence Publishing, Belleville, Ontario
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form without prior written permission of the publishers.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise specified, are from The Holy Bible, New International Version . Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Scriptures marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible , English Standard Version. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Beckingham, Paul M., 1952-
Walking towards hope: experiencing grace in a time of
brokenness / Paul M. Beckingham.
Includes index.
ISBN 1-894860-24-1
1. Beckingham, Paul M., 1952- 2. People with disabilities--Religious aspects--Christianity. 3. Hope--Religious aspects--Christianity. 4. People with disabilities--Biography. 5. Brain-damage--Patients--Biography. 6. Christian biography. 7. Missionaries--Biography. I. Title.
RC387.5.B42 2004 270'.092 C2004-905540-2
Dedication
To Mary, Hannah, Naomi, Leah, David, and Aaron.
One family on a journey Walking together towards hope.
Foreword
“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him” (Psalm 91:14–15).
I have rarely been so moved as when reading this book. Paul Beckingham was my friend at Regent College, Vancouver, and I knew him then as an extraordinarily gifted Christian leader. He was superb with youth: indeed, he had been youth director of the tough London City Mission. He was the pastor of one of the dynamic churches in the Vancouver area, Marineview Chapel. And he was a very gifted evangelist. Our practice at Regent was to take teams out for a week or more of intentional evangelism in Canadian cities and universities, and he and Richard Sharp, now ambassador at large of Operation Mobilisation USA, were major stars. They were the best evangelists I had the privilege of working with. After gaining his M.Div., Paul went with the Canadian Baptist Ministries as a missionary to Kenya.
I next saw him when he was well into his recovery from an automobile accident so horrific that fifteen bones were smashed, and he sustained massive injuries to his skull. It was so horrific that several surgeons refused to operate. So horrific that three times he passed away and was resuscitated during the hours of surgery. I say he was well into his recovery when I next saw him, but that is an exaggeration. His concentration was very short, his limp profound, his exhaustion and pain obvious. But he had started on the long road back to life from the very edge of the grave.
The book is superbly written. It enables the reader almost to get inside the experience of the patient. Paul had been a major achiever, and after the accident had to settle for disabilities that would accompany him to the grave. How could such a man cope with these outstanding injuries? How could his wife and family handle the radical change in husband and father? This book lets us in on the story. It is a story of anger, pain and disability. A story of incoherence, despair and the closest possible brush with death. It tells of love, sacrifice and gradual recovery, still incomplete years after the fateful crash that day on the Limuru road when Paul the missionary had his car reduced to a mangled wreck by an enormous Kenyan military vehicle whose driver wandered back, looked at the scene and has not been heard of since. It is a story of astounding heroism in him, and in his wife Mary. A story of prayer and, most of the time, deep faith. But supremely this book carries a message of hope which could be of inestimable value to those who are struggling with disability and disaster. The theme of hope is interwoven with almost every chapter. He has clearly read widely on the subject Moltmann’s book, among others, has been a blessing to him. But his greatest teacher has been his own experience of hope in the crucible of sustained and intolerable anguish.
He tells of the sustainable development he longs to see take root in Kenya, which could change the lives of penniless people like Daniel, injured in the car with him. He gives a moving account of his return to Kenya after years of partial recovery, to lay some of the ghost of the past. He gives us postcards from Kenya stories of those who made an indelible impact on him during his missionary service. He has absorbed something of the African attitude to time “hurry kills.” So there is a wonderfully reflective note to this book, and the effect is both beautiful and challenging. The authentic Christian conviction comes out of the twisted chaos of his accident: Satan meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. And you can see the goodness of God beginning to unfold as the story develops. Of course it is costly grace: there is no cheap story of victory here. The book’s subheading says it all “Experiencing grace in a time of brokenness.” And a long time it was.
There is a fascinating account of his neurological tests with a top Jewish neuropsycholgist who was both compassionate and utterly honest. He believed that there were certain things that Paul could still achieve to a high standard, but never the complex multi-task skills that he had once had. Nor would he ever complete the doctorate on which he had set his hopes. The book leaves him in a “Don’t know” attitude to the future, teaching in Carey Theological College, Vancouver. And lo and behold on the title page I read “Dr. Paul Beckingham”! He got there after all. Now that is some story. A story of faith in the dark, hope in a hopeless situation, vast courage and determination, and a character that has clearly been refined by the whole experience. I suspect that Paul’s greatest influence will prove not to have been in the hey-day of his strength and abilities, but in the impact his life continues to make on countless people after the accident. Read it and pass it on. It will change you.
Rev. Dr. Michael Green, Oxford University
Preface
He has broken my strength in midcourse, He has shortened my days. “O my God,” I say, “take me not away in the midst of my days you whose years endure throughout all generations!” (Psalm 102:23–24, ESV)
My mind goes back to the days when Paul Beckingham, as an Englishman turned Canadian like myself, a home mission leader now studying theology to equip himself for wider work, was a member of my fellowship group at Regent College. Energetic and exuberant, with an arresting testimony to God’s work in his life thus far, the gifts and instincts of a pastoral pioneer were already apparent in him and he was a huge asset in our group process. I remember too how he helped us to move house in heat that was almost killing me; he manhandled cases of books with an ease and speed that were almost debonair. It is wrenching to think how much less he is, in human terms, today than he was then.
What does a horrific accident, that leaves you permanently disabled in body, and with brain damage as well, do to your sense of who you are before God? Having endured just such an accident, Paul here tells of his partial recovery over five years in such a way as to answer that question as far as he can. He was a missionary in Kenya when it happened; he is back in Vancouver now, limited in body and mind for the rest of his earthly life. His story, unselfconsciously and even cheerfully told, is about God and an honest man who now grows, not upwards into further achievement, but downwards into increasing realism about the restrictions under which he must live. His book is not a prettied-up presentation for pious purposes, but simply the plain record of a brave man and his brave wife breasting wave after wave of trouble with God-given guts. The story will stabilize you even as it shakes you, for the goodness and glory of God are in it along with everything else.
It is not beyond God to get himself glory in the life of someone he loves by weakening that person. There was an earlier Paul to whom God gave a thorn in the flesh; had he not done so we might never have had the second letter to the Corinthians, the biblical classic on, among other things, weakness taken in stride by faith. There is Joni Eareckson, quadriplegic magnificent, without whose superb books and advocacy for the disabled any number of us would be poorer. In this apostolic succession of God-sent weakness, Paul Beckingham now stands. It is a safe and even privileged place to be.
My guess is that you have never read anything like this narrative before. My amazement is that it exists at all. My plea is: don’t miss it! I covet for you what it gave to me.
Rev. Dr. James I. Packer, Regent College, Vancouver, BC
Introduction
This personal narrative of the auth