My Surgeon's Good News

I first noticed the pain in my right shoulder on the plane on the way to our mission trip in Albania. Then a week later, I noticed some weakness in my right arm when I reached for something at the dinner table. I realized, eventually, that I couldn’t raise my right arm above my shoulder. I could manage the pain, but the immobility and weakness told me that something was wrong.

As soon as we got back home, I went to my family doctor, who diagnosed “frozen shoulder” and sent me to physical therapy. But the therapist disagreed. It’s not frozen shoulder, he said, but he wasn’t sure what was causing my discomfort and weakness.

I knew I needed an accurate diagnosis, so I went to the orthopedic surgeon who replaced my knee last summer, and he gave me the bad news: this was, in his words, a “textbook case” of torn rotator cuff, and I would probably need surgery if I ever hoped to regain full mobility in my right arm. He referred me for an MRI.

Five days after the MRI the surgeon called. And he had good news for me. The scan had not shown the kind of tear he expected to see. He thought that physical therapy would be able to mend my shoulder.

It’s funny how you can carry anxiety that you’re not consciously aware of. In those long days between the MRI and the phone call, if you had asked me if I was anxious, I probably wouldn’t have thought so. I had been through knee replacement surgery, so I knew the drill. I did think that having my right arm immobilized for weeks would be inconvenient, and I had heard that recuperating from shoulder surgery is especially painful. But I didn’t really lose sleep over it.

That’s why I was surprised at how giddy I was after that phone call from the surgeon. I had heard good news that dramatically changed the prospect of what life would be like over the next few months. I had, in the words of my surgeon, “delayed my appointment with bright lights and cold steel.”

Hope has a way of lifting spirits, and despite my continued pain and immobility, thanks to my surgeon’s good news I felt much better about things. My pain still persisted, and I still couldn’t lift my arm, but my new and improved prospects revolutionized my outlook.

Our word “evangelism” comes from the Greek word “evangel” or “good news.”

The “evangel” was the proclamation of a herald returned from the far-off battlefield, the good news that the king had conquered the enemy, and he would soon return in triumph. In some ways, the “evangel” declared by the herald changed nothing. Life would carry on as usual in the kingdom, the same buying and selling in the market, the same petty rivalries, the same gossip. But in some ways, the herald’s “evangel” would change everything. There was no more worry that the king had been defeated and the enemy would soon be at the gate; the king had dispatched the enemy, the threat was gone.

The “evangel” that Paul carried throughout the Mediterranean world was that the death and resurrection of Jesus had conquered the power of sin and death, the same power that lay behind the brutality of the Roman occupiers and the corruption of Jewish leaders. That same deadly power still manifests itself in torn rotator cuffs and cancer and human trafficking and the opioid crisis and racism and the ghastly abortion industry.

The Good News about Jesus is that he has conquered this vicious power; Christ has broken its back, and he will someday put it away finally and completely when he returns to make all things right.

My surgeon’s news didn’t change my immediate situation, but it changed everything about my outlook. His news gave me hope.

The Good News about Jesus doesn’t change our immediate situation: our bodies still age and decline, the world is still on fire, we still struggle and lament. But the Good News about Jesus means that God is bending the trajectory of world history toward a glorious Moment when sin and death are finally put away.