Desperate
Many people are not aware that when I was younger, I was the survivor of an abduction attempt. By younger I mean that I had just turned 40. I was alone in the church one Sunday night…at least I thought I was alone. I heard some scuffling of feet approaching my office from a nearby hallway. This seemed unusual as it was already past 8:30 p.m. and unless there was an appointment…which there wasn’t…there was no reason for anyone else to be in the building. I rose from my desk and made my way to the office door to inspect the hallway. When I looked to the right I saw five young men of various statures looking at me with curious smug smirks.
“Hello boys, is there something I can do for yo…”
“GET HIM!” the largest of the 5 yelled, and I was suddenly bear hugged from behind.
I saw large heavy white zipties appear in the hands of a long haired mugger and heard him bark, “I got his feet!”
This was not good! Instinctively, I allowed 20 plus years of wrestling experience to take over and I fought back. With the use of my arms, hands and legs I was able to bring one of the five assailants to the floor and reverse the position of the bear hugger. Fortunately for me, another of the five was either not expecting the retaliatory fight back or was too anxious to continue the attempted abduction, because he fled, leaving only four.
Two of the remaining four would be considered smaller in stature than average, but the other two were much more stalwart. I was able to keep the four young men from securing me with their bonds for a fair amount of time before my ankles were finally encased in the zip-ties…though not yet securely.
I succeeded in immobilizing one of the smaller assailants with his own zip-ties and held one of the larger attackers securely in my arms, preventing his efforts. Despite this, the remaining two continued to attempt to bind me and I knew I could not win this fight. I felt myself becoming desperate.
I considered my options which were few. Then I noticed the long locks of hair hanging from the tall skinny mugger and I did what I had to do. I reached up with my only free appendage and I grabbed a handful of the 28” rockstar hair and I pulled.
“Oh man! Dude! Not the hair! Ahhh! The hair! He’s got my hair! Let go of my hair!”
I did not let go. In fact nothing short of death was going to get me to let go of this fistful of hair. In fact, I took the liberty of pulling the hair harder and in different directions with every shift of my fighting body.
“Whoa! Ryan! Take it easy! Let go of Daniel’s hair!” Said the largest of the remaining four, “We just wanted to take you out for your 40th birthday! We asked Sarah if we could kidnap you and she said , “yes.” So that’s what we are doing.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“What?! We were going to throw you in the trunk and take you to Buffalo Wild Wings for your birthday.”
“I repeat…What’s wrong with you?...Next time…just ask.”
We went to BWW’s, and it was amazing.
There comes a time in our lives where we will in some way find ourselves desperate. These are the times when we may be willing to do things that we wouldn’t normally think ourselves capable of. It is possible that may find ourselves desperate and looking for hope and will do just about anything to find help.
In Matthew 9:18-34, we find a series of events, filled with desperate people. We find desperate parents, desperate men and desperate women, of which all have something in common…they are desperate for something that can only come from the hand of God. Jesus meets them in their desperation.
May we too find Jesus in the moments of our desperation.
