Making Fools of the Wise

I just read in today’s Breakpoint about a woman named Christa Lilly from Colorado who last month emerged from six years in a “persistent vegetative state,” sat up and ate, conversed with family members, alert and aware. Three days later, she lapsed back into a coma, but her brief awakening still has doctors baffled.

Her neurologist, Dr. Randall Bjork, said he couldn't explain how or why she awoke.
"I'm just not able to explain this on the basis of what we know about persistent vegetative states," he said.

It was almost exactly two years ago that Terri Schiavo was starved to death, a sentence carried out by her remorseless husband and a supremely arrogant neurologist who insisted she would never recover. Christa Lilly was actually unresponsive in her “persistent vegetative state,” but Terri could laugh, smile, and recognize family members. Imagine what she might have done or what "awakenings" she might have shown if she had been fed!

I can’t allow myself to write much about this because my outrage over the injustice perpetrated against Terri Schiavo will resurface all the more. I will say that I praise God Christa Lilly has loving family members in charge of her care and looking after her. Her story should be shouted over the airwaves to every Michael Schiavo and every “right to die” expert who claims to know more about the human brain than what has been revealed to man. Christa Lilly’s case is one of the many that cry out: “You know nothing!”

Jesus said that God has hidden things from the wise and learned (Luke 10:21). Paul, in Romans 1:22 said, “Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools.” Human consciousness is a mystery that will never be fully understood, and it exists on levels I believe we will never be able to read. We must beware any diagnosis that declares a person "dead" while the heart is still beating on its own. Would that every PVS victim awaken to make fools of those who would pass such sentence on them.

To anyone reading this, I wish you a blessed Holy Week, and for Christa Lilly's family I pray for hope and confidence in the Lord of Life who defeated death.