The Surgeon's Unthinkable Cut

In 1846, a young mother named Alice Bennett lay dying of gangrene in a London hospital. Dr. Robert Liston told her he would save her life — by removing her leg. Alice wept. Her husband raged. How could destruction possibly be the path to healing? The surgery seemed like butchery, not medicine. But Liston knew something the Bennetts could not yet see. He had watched gangrene devour patient after patient who refused the blade. Thirty-eight seconds — that was all it took. Liston was the fastest surgeon in Europe. And within six weeks, Alice walked again on a wooden leg, alive to raise her three children.

Habakkuk stood before the Almighty with the same bewilderment. He had begged God to act against the wickedness consuming Judah. And God answered — but the answer was staggering. The Most High would raise up the Babylonians, a brutal and impetuous nation, as His instrument of correction. It was like asking a doctor to heal your child and watching him reach for a bone saw.

"Look among the nations and watch — and be utterly amazed," God declared. "For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told."

The Almighty does not owe us comprehensible methods. Sometimes the most redemptive work looks, at first, like the most devastating loss. Faith is trusting the Surgeon's hand even when the blade descends.