Through the Eye of a Needle

May 1, 1992

I remember the first time I saw John. I was waiting for news that could have had a lasting impact on my life, but that wasn’t the reason that my first meeting him became etched in my memory. Nor was there anything startling about the way we met. A receptionist at a desk called out to me to say that the doctor was coming out of O.R.. I looked up from my chair to see John walking toward me. I can see it all so clearly. He was still wearing his surgical gown and cap, and his mask hung wearily around his neck. The only part of his garments that he had time to strip off were his gloves; I remember because we shook hands and he had a firm handshake, the kind surgeon’s ought to have. He looked and acted composed, especially for just having stood over a man to perform a complicated and lengthy operation. No, that first meeting wasn’t memorable for any of the reasons you would figure. No, it was because in that moment, before John even had a chance to speak, my fears and anxieties for the patient were quelled and replaced by an inexplicable pity for the physician. I didn’t have the time or the inclination at that moment to consider what my feeling meant or why on earth I was having it, it wasn’t till later that I realized the extraordinary irony in it; that my mother and I were waiting for news about my stepfather’s life threatening condition, news that would have lasting effect on our home and family, and I was feeling sorry for the doctor as if HE were the patient. Little did I know that John would become my parent’s spiritual patient before the year was out.

John spoke first in that initial meeting, giving us the worrisome news that Roy’s cancer was too involved and too large to remove, and that radiation therapy was probably necessary. His tone was apologetic and disappointment was written all over his face. I had no desire to quiz him, I just had an urging to console him. I asked him if he was alright. I told him how I figured he must be very tired after such a long ordeal, and that I and my family appreciated everything he was doing. It was nothing I had planned to say, and I suppose, way out of character for me. I had no inherent liking for the medical field, in fact, I was suspicious of it. I disdained the godlike arrogance that can sometimes ooze from the medical establishment and distrusted the profession that can so easily turn healing into business for profit. But the more John talked the more I felt sorry for him. I saw a man who cared, a man who believed that he had taken on the responsibilities of restoring life and defeating death and that the balance lay in the success of his skilled hands. I felt both admiration and reassurance, but I felt great sympathy too. This man who had stood and sweated, and labored over my friend and step-father for so many hours, was carrying as big a burden as any of his patients. In that moment of time I sensed, as I stood and looked at his face, all the pressures, the frustrations and dashed hopes, and the heavy burdens, that were on the back of John Eielson.

Some of John’s burdens were his own doing, some came with the territory, his profession of healing. He wanted to cure every patient, be the healer of all, see no suffering and wipe away death. I sensed how hard it must be to tell parents, children, friends, the worst of possible news. I felt how difficult it must be to believe that you’re responsible for whether a man lives or dies. That dealing with the patients was bad enough, but how did one cope with the bitterness and hatred and grief of families and loved ones. I sensed the frustration and disappointment at each failure and that no matter how many successes came before, not one hundred cures could soothe the loss of a single battle. I saw that this surgeon was frustrated, tired, constantly threatened, and often abused, deified and worshipped and at the same time hated. Later, after getting to know him, I knew that John took it all very seriously, his role as a healer, as a physician who wanted to give the gift of health and life to all of his patients. In that moment maybe I sensed that also, his love and generosity, that is. Maybe it was in his eyes just before he spoke, or in his voice as he told my mother and me the bad news, I don’t know for sure, I just know today that John cared about his oath and about his responsibility as a doctor. Maybe he cared too much, and maybe that’s part of the reason God chose to take him home to be with him, because he was locked into an impossible job, a job where his standards of perfection were unattainable, and yet anything short of that perfection was unacceptable failure to him. Maybe he could not have ever overridden his feelings of guilt. Maybe he could never have been detached enough to be happy and at peace.

Over the years John had gotten more and more frustrated in his work. His worsening temper and unbridled cursing were signs of his heightening frustration, but thank God for his frustrations, because his frustrations, as it turned out, worked for his salvation. That was one of his tough lessons I guess, finding out that he was not responsible before God for a man’s life. God over the last five years of his life relieved John of the burden of having to be “god”. In the process God used John to heal People in a way that truly fulfilled the desire of John’s heart. John’s deliverance was truly marvelous and at the same time hard to watch, it was lovely and inspiring and at times frustrating and anxious, it was edifying and encouraging and always interesting, and in the end it was both miraculous and merciful, and we love God all the more for loving John the way he has.

Roy and Neena did most of the work of anguishing over John’s trials and tribulations in Christ. Like spiritual surgeons, they labored over John as he was laid open on the Holy Ghost’s operating table. They, through Roy’s illness and God’s use of John’s care and talent which was instrumental in bringing Roy back to health, preached the gospel to John. They coaxed him to receive the Holy Ghost and were delighted to water baptize him. They crawled with him when he crawled, gave him rein to run as he explored his new world in which he was a new creature, comforted him during his trials, and loved him enough to say no when it needed to be said. In return John was honest and sincere and he seemed determined to be among the few who leave that wide and well travelled road that leads to Hell for that narrow and less traveled path.

John pricked my heart the night he testified that he wanted to be a righteous man. That in fact was the motivating force behind his accepting Christ as his personal savior. All his life John had striven to be a righteous man and, like myself, had failed, but he found righteousness in Christ that night when he knelt and invited the living God into his heart, beginning a four and a half year walk that produced a bright and burning fervor for God’s word in his life.

From almost the very moment that John accepted Christ, things in this world got tougher for him. Maybe that’s the way of things for the rich man who comes to Christ and truly decides to follow him withersoever he goeth. John seemed to have everything before he accepted the Lord. He had a wonderful family and wife, a fine professional career, money, respect, and friends. He summarized it by saying, “I had it all, even the house on the hill”. But after giving his life to Christ he began to trip down off that hill that was to be his deliverance and freedom. The Church is filled with wonderful testimonies of impoverished people that come to the Lord and find prosperity and hope and are lifted up out of the gutter to meaningful lives. But John’s ultimate testimony is something entirely different. For John, who had it all, it was a time of turmoil and trouble on nearly every earthly scale, instead it was the spirit, the deep inner things, his fears, and guilt, his disappointments and lies, that God planned to take out of his life, and the cost was every bit of John’s world. But don’t be sad, or confused. Praise God, because I believe John was willing to pay the price for righteousness’ sake and for the cause of Jesus Christ. Some of the personal victories I can only guess at, others John confessed and testified to, and still others were played out before our eyes. Unlike the young rich man who asked Jesus what he should do to be saved and was told to give up everything and follow Jesus, but couldn’t do it, John was able to do it. John wanted to be free of worldly burdens, to lay all his burdens down, and let Jesus carry them for him. The four years leading to his death were spent in getting free from the sorts of misconceptions, burdens and fears that are common to us all and yet so contrary to God’s love. God gave John all the tools that made him complete in Christ by making him a new creature, giving him the gift of the Holy Ghost and instructing him to have the faith to die to self. Because John was a public man God saw to it that the whole process was a public affair and John testified to these things without shame or reservation. God’s power made them real in John’s life.

John’s zeal for God’s word, his generosity and desire to heal, and his honest desire for righteousness was a source of edification for the Church wherever he fellowshipped. I believe God took John home to be with him because it fit his plan perfectly. John knew that he was like the young rich man in the gospel who had to give up everything and follow after Jesus. He also testified many times that his salvation was like a camel going through the eye of a needle. It may have been necessary for John to give up everything, including his life, so he could be threaded through the eye of that needle. I know in my heart John’s life, salvation and death were God’s mercy on a man who was called according to God’s purpose.

Shortly after John’s brain tumor was diagnosed, I found myself at the hospital where John was head of Thoracic Surgery working on a story. The hospital had just gotten in a new mobile Magnetic Resonance Imaging unit and was looking for publicity. It was exactly the same type machine used to detect John’s tumor and as I sat in the lobby waiting for my contact, the Lord spoke to my heart saying, “It’s all right to live, get sick, and die.” There in that hospital surrounding – the same one where I had had my first memorable meeting with John – where everything, every living movement and inanimate object existed in opposition to that statement, God was giving me reassurance about John. At the time I didn’t think it necessarily meant that John would die from his cancer, I just knew that God was telling me that it can be all right to live a good life, in other words to have life in abundance, then to get sick, never recover from that sickness and then die. He also wasn’t merely saying that it could be OK, that it would be alright, God was telling me, I knew, that it could be all right, as in perfectly good, as in all things would be exactly right, all of it would be right. As I looked around, heard the murmuring conversations in the background and heard the intercom summoning doctors to their patient’s sides, I knew that what might look like a tragedy, would be God’s mercy instead, and could be happening to John. Here was a man who had it all, the house on the hill, a life of abundance, and he was sick, and in spite of his lifelong commitment to medicine, and how contradictory and unacceptable it would be for the medical community to believe, it might be possible for everything, all things, concerning John to be right, even if he never recovered from his cancer.

That of course eventually happened. John never recovered, and yet I believe everything concerning his salvation and eternal life is all right. The camel has gone through the eye of the needle and as the miracle was worked I beheld God’s power of love for John Eielson. To be sure Roy and my mother have more to share than I about John’s salvation, all those who watched this miracle have their reassurances, and it all goes to God’s glory.

John’s death has sealed his eternal reward – and it is always wonderful to be able to say that without reservation. John was healed as he would have others be healed, in spirit and righteousness. Hopefully, his healing will be a testimony that will heal many others. For those of us who got to know and love John Eielson in Christ and remain here to work out our salvation, we are split. We rejoice because John has gone home, but we are sorry because we miss his fellowship. But even our longing for John’s fellowship is used by God to deliver us from this world, and from our own “houses on the hill”. The Lord has taken one of his jewels home, a jewel close to us and our treasure is increased in heaven because we look forward to meeting with him on that beautiful shore. John’s presence there is used by the Lord to help us place our heart’s desire in heaven, for as Jesus promised, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”.