The year before I entered military service, I had met a young man who was a paramedic with the Johannesburg Ambulance Service, and he had made such an impression on me that I had actually changed my military service detail from infantry to medical. Having done basic military training and then an operational medics course, and serving for the remainder of my time at a mechanized battalion in the Namibian Desert, I left the military and joined the Johannesburg Ambulance Service at Brixton. I worked there for 4 years, improving my qualifications and gaining valuable experience.
In 1995, I broke my back while on duty. I was not aware that I had developed osteo-porosis and has lost almost half of my bone density. In ambulance work, there is a lot of lifting involved, and that day I made my final lift. I heard a loud crack in my back and opened my tear-filled eyes, lying flat on my back, looking up at the sky. My breath was gone and knowing what I do about spinal nerves, was wondering if I would breathe again. After what seemed like ages, I drew a deep breath, to my relief, and began to clamber to my feet. I was in pain and was taken to hospital by ambulance.
After 3 years I was medically boarded and pensioned off at age 27. While it may sound idyllic to the lazy, it couldn't have been more unsettling for me. Having been a thoroughly active teenager in the gym, and having lived a very physical life in the army, and having lived a very fast-paced life in the ambulance service, I was now sitting at home with nothing to do but doctors to see and TV to watch. I couldn't go anywhere because I had doctor's appointments every second day. I couldn't get into a routine because I never knew whether I would have to go back to work or not, or whether a doctor would send me for some or other test at another hospital. For 3 years, I sat around doing nothing and began to sink into depression.
While these three years stand out as uniquely difficult years in my memory, I see that they were also the three years that did the most good for me, because in those three years I was forced to face up to my spiritual condition. God was being good to me by sitting me down and forcing me examine the critical issues of spiritual commitment.
Yes, I was a Christian, I had professed faith in Christ in 1981. I had been at a conference with my parents where an international speaker had been invited to speak. He was particularly gifted in evangelistic preaching. My father drew me into the men's prayer meeting before the one service and I knelt, a boy, with the men, to pray. My grandfather, my father's dad, was kneeling next to me and praying in earnest tones. He had been a drunkard until his early 30's, and the Lord had radically changed his life. He knew what it was to be lost and found, and it was with this earnestness that he prayed for lost sinners to be saved in the meeting that evening.
As I listened to him pray, I suddenly realized that it was I myself who was lost. It struck me that this man praying next to me was actually speaking to God! He had a relationship with God that I knew nothing of! As my grandfather pleaded with the Lord for souls to be saved, I was simultaneously pleading with the Lord to save me. That night, I was filled with overwhelming joy, to the point of tears. I was a lost, self-centered child who had come, by God's grace, to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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