Not My Own
Bob VerBurg
In January of 2020, my wife, Kim, got pneumonia. After a visit to the emergency room, she was immediately admitted to the hospital. A couple of hours after that, the pneumonia had progressed so rapidly that Kim was transferred to the intensive care unit. This was before Covid, so the hospital allowed me to spend the night in Kim’s room with her.
The second night we were there, I heard muted, urgent activity outside our room around 3 am. I opened the door a bit, and across the hall was a young boy who had gone into cardiac arrest. A resuscitation team was hard at work; the parents were standing in the hall crying and praying and negotiating with God, “Please, God, not this, not now, anything but this!” The doctor approached them and told them they would keep working on their son as long as they wanted, “but” the doctor added, “I don’t want to offer any false hope.”
The boy’s adult sister arrived, and as all three of them embraced and cried, the dad said, “We have to let him go now; we have to say goodbye.” As this boy’s parents and sister entered the room, the resuscitation team stopped their work and quietly left the room.
My lack of sleep from the last two days had taken its emotional toll on me. The emotional and physical fatigue of the last two days caused me to internalize this family’s grief without me even knowing it was happening. I had to leave the building. I stood on the top floor of the parking garage at St Mary’s Hospital and faced a north winter wind that cut to my bones. The helplessness and hopelessness of this boy’s death overwhelmed me. I couldn’t help but internalize the parents’ overwhelming grief and loss; life seemed so unfair and unjust. And those words, “I don’t want to offer any false hope.”
If an expert medical team in an ICU can’t offer any hope, then what hope is there? A comforting verse from the Bible eluded me, but what did suddenly come to mind was the first question and answer in the Heidelberg Catechism. “What is my only comfort [hope] in life and in death?”
The only part of the answer I could remember was, “That I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” I returned to Kim’s room and found the Catechism online and read the whole answer from a very different perspective than I’ve ever read it before. Every sentence took on a deeper meaning than ever before.
Because I belong to Jesus Christ, nothing happens to me that God doesn’t already know. I realized that I would never hear God say, “That’s a surprise,” or “I didn’t know that would happen,” or “I never saw that coming.” In the CRC, the Heidelberg Catechism is not simply a statement of our faith. It is also a teaching tool by which we may further deepen our identity as a Christian. The Catechism adds context to my understanding of my relationship with God.
In his sermon, “Paul’s Last Altar Call” (May 26, 2024), Pastor Arek told us our best testimony and witness is to know our identity and to be able to live and verbalize it. And Arek challenged us to use all resources available to help us with that, not just the Bible but also the resources the Church provides, including the catechism.
Since January 2020, I’ve read through the Heidelberg Catechism a couple of times and have found it to be very enriching. In times of crisis, I go back to these words: “That I am not my own, but belong body and soul to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
In 2021, when my family went through a crisis when my brother passed away from cancer, I just kept repeating those words, “We are not our own, but we belong body and soul to Jesus Christ.” And when there is an announcement in church about someone with a new diagnosis of a severe disease or an unexpected death, my prayer for that family is they remember, “They are not their own, but belong body and soul to Jesus Christ.”
Q. What is your only comfort in life and death?
A. That I am not my own, but belong - body and soul, in life and in death - to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.