I've Been Shot

I’ve Been Shot

It was late March 2008. We were on our way to a Pastors Conference in northwest Montana. This conference is an annual gathering of men and women in ministry. I asked three young men from our church to tag along so they could be exposed to what the Lord was doing. It is a five-hour road trip.

When we stopped for gas in a small town, one of the men mentioned that he brought his 40-caliber semi automatic with him. Being a gun guy myself, I asked to see it. After taking the loaded clip out, he handed me the gun. A side note: it is lawful in Montana to carry a loaded gun in your vehicle. After admiring the gun I gave it back to him. He reloaded the clip and by habit pulled the trigger, dry firing the gun.

The explosion of a discharged gun in a car just about shattered our eardrums.  We were stunned. As we looked around to see what happened I saw blood on my seat. I reached around and probed with my hand. It was my blood on the seat. I had been shot. Not realizing that by putting the clip back in the gun, a bullet entered the firing chamber. It was not a dry fire but a live fire!

I went into shock. By the time I was conscious I was lying on an examining table in a doctor’s office with a nurse cutting through my jeans with a large pair of scissors. The doctor said that he found an entrance wound in my left buttocks but no exit wound and I needed to be transported to a regional hospital some distance away. Lying inside the ambulance with the siren blaring, I had lots of time to make my peace with God.

Arriving at the hospital I lay on a gurney, bare-naked, with people poking and probing me. The most embarrassing part was when the doctor asked me where I was from and what I did for a living. When I told him I was a pastor, the whole ER broke out laughing. The doctor said, “We have never had a pastor here who was shot in the ass!”

To make a rather long story short, I went into surgery later that evening to remove the bullet. The next morning the surgeon told me that I was a very lucky man. He said the car seat deflected the bullet and absorbed most of the bullet’s velocity. If the bullet had struck me a few inches to the right, it would have shattered my spine.

I am reminded of the words of Jesus, “As for the man who hits you on one cheek, offer him the other as well.”  Now I can say that by the grace of God “I took a bullet for Jesus and turned the other cheek.”