On September 11, 2001, Brian Birdwell, a lieutenant colonel in the United
7. COURAGE TO CONTINUE
On September 11, 2001, Brian Birdwell, a lieutenant colonel in the United States military, was at work in the Pentagon building. Without any warning he was suddenly knocked off his feet and the world went dark around him.
The next thing he knew, Birdwell became conscious of the overpowering smell and taste of jet fuel, and he realized that he was on fire. Struggling, he managed to crawl for some distance until he collapsed under one of the fire sprinklers in the corridor he was in and was eventually found and rushed to emergency medical treatment.
There it became clear that Birdwell was burned over sixty percent of his body surface and his lungs were also badly damaged. Burns are among the most painful and difficult to heal injuries we can experience, which is what makes this and similar cases so meaningful. It would take some forty surgeries and long months and years of healing to get him back to anywhere near normal life.
Colonel Birdwell was one of many service people and civilians who were badly injured in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and his story was carefully researched and told by writer Donna St. George in a moving Washington Post article. She shows how Birdwell felt he did not suffer the kind of emotional and psychological fallout with which many survivors have struggled, perhaps because early in his recovery, he looked to his pastor for help. His wife and his faith, he said, are what got him through the lasting pain and seemingly endless surgeries.
Birdwell and his wife eventually founded a nonprofit organization, Face the Fire Ministries, to support critically injured burn patients and the military's wounded. He also serves in other ways. In 2010, he ran as a Republican for a Texas state Senate seat and won — and has since been reelected. Even today, he remains scarred; but he says his scars "are a reminder of the Lord's grace."
In their lives and injuries, Colonel Birdwell and many other burn victims exemplify the kind of courage that is needed to simply continue – to keep going when it would be so much easier to give up. Many of these burn victims were influenced and helped by their Christian faith and have used the courage to endure in order not only to be able to continue themselves, but also to continue to serve and help others.
The Courage to Continue Although the experiences of burn victims may be unique in many ways, they are doubtless the same in others. Many experience times when they simply feel they do not have the strength to continue. But that is precisely when the courage to continue has its greatest effect. A couple of centuries before our time, another military man – the French general Napoléon Bonaparte – is reported to have said "Courage isn't having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don't have strength."
To put it another way, endurance is long-term courage. In our own Christian lives the courage to continue may mean continuing when sickness, injury, poverty, persecution, pain, depression, or some other serious problem wears us down and we find it hard to go on. Thankfully, we have hope in such situations, but so many do not have that help. In the world around us, the decreasing level of faith – and the resulting lack of hope – has caused a spiraling increase in suicides in recent years. Not only those who have experienced terrible traumas commit suicide, but also in an age when most never learn the meaning of the courage to continue, some end their lives because of even short-term or relatively small problems. Christians are not immune to difficulties, of course. Even the apostle John described himself as "I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus" (Revelation 1:9 and see 13:10; 14:12; etc.).
Fortunately, as Christians we find a great deal of guidance and encouragement in the word of God in exactly this area. The New Testament talks repeatedly about enduring in the face of suffering – and points us to specific ways to find the courage to endure. The Hope that Helps Us Endure One of the first things we learn from the Scriptures regarding the courage to continue is that it is based solidly on a foundation of hope. In fact, the apostle Paul tells us that the Scriptures themselves were written to provide the hope that gives us courageous endurance. Notice what he told the Christians in Rome (in his epistle written when these believers had already been experiencing persecution under the emperor Claudius, and perhaps even the terrible cruelty of Nero): "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might
have hope" (Romans 15:4). Earlier in the same letter, Paul tells us "we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope" (Romans 5:3–4). So we see that the courage to endure is not just a matter of being able to grit our teeth and somehow ignore our problems – it is based on a living active hope that God will bring us through whatever he allows to affect us, and that even while we are experiencing problems God is working with us to teach us and help us. That is why the apostle tells us in another letter:
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18) And this hope that helps us continue through pain and suffering of different types also shines like a beacon or fire in the night that gives us a goal and helps us continue through less dramatic but equally draining long-term problems – illnesses, financial and interpersonal difficulties, and even the ongoing grind of exhaustion from overwork and lack of rest. It is even a hope that can help us continue to work tirelessly both in striving and overcoming in our own lives (Philippians 1:6), and in helping others in theirs (Galatians 6:9). That is why Paul tells us explicitly in 1 Thessalonians 1:3 that endurance is inspired by hope.1
But this hope-driven endurance is not something we need try to work up ourselves. It comes to us when we stay close to God and, as Paul says, "fix our eyes" on what God is accomplishing and on his eternal purpose. When we do that, the hope we need is a gift God gives. As Paul himself tells us, "the God who gives endurance and encouragement" (Romans 15:5) helps us to be "strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience" (Colossians 1:11) We have quoted Paul primarily in this chapter and there is good reason for that. Paul, as much as any other apostle, knew what it was like to have to endure. We need only read the catalog of problems – some of them long-term – that he suffered and survived in order to see that (2
Corinthians 11:16-33). But in all he endured Paul himself maintained hope and that hope gave him the courage he needed just as it does us. We too can follow in the footsteps of Paul to the extent that we remember the connection between hope and the courage to continue. We too can allow God to give us the hope and therefore the courage we need in any circumstance, in life and even in death itself. Just as Paul said, we can also say: "I eagerly expect and hope that I will … have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death" (Philippians 1:20).
1 Paul frequently stresses the connection between hope and patient endurance in his epistles. We see this, for example, in the way he often varies his great triad of God-given qualities, "faith, hope, and love" by substituting the word "endurance" for the word "hope" ("faith, love, endurance" 1 Timothy 6:11; "faith, patience, love, endurance" 2 Timothy 3:10; "faith, love, endurance" Titus 2:2).