It was a hot, sultry day in Dallas, Texas. We had arrived a month early to settle in for my start at Dallas Seminary. The year was 1979. At 29 years old, I was launching with Mary into a complete career change, walking away from eight years working in the R&D and banking worlds. Visions of doing great things for God danced in my mind, with the fanfare of the angelic chorus singing in glory and the great “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1), namely the martyrs and saints that had gone on before us, bending over the balcony of heaven in anticipation of the great and wonderful works we would accomplish for Christian history. Fortunately, God was able to sort through my motivations, separating the good from the bad—but I needed a few lessons (in fact, many lessons) in what it means to live for the Lord amidst grand ambitions.

I had been studying up on my Greek language studies, which I had been learning through the previous year on my own. I had hoped this knowledge would enable me to skip ahead directly into the second-year Greek courses at the seminary. I was all in and assured the unseen world was quite impressed.

During the month before school began, I spent a good amount of time reviewing for the competency exam to determine whether I had adequate facility in the original language. One night I was dreaming about my studying; it was more of a nightmare. In my nocturnal struggle, I wrestled with remembering the required Greek vocabulary. I kept forgetting even the simplest words and the basic grammar. It was painful, quite painful! So much so that it woke me up. Mary was disturbed out of her sleep by my thrashing around.

Awake now, the pain in my chest continued—the dream was extending into my awakening to real life. Upon examination, we discovered an enormous welt above my left pectoral muscle, like a massive bee sting. Coming to our senses, we concluded I had been stung by something, more than just a bee sting, although a search of the room found no insects capable of such a wallop.

Finally, getting ready to fall back into bed, the sting lessening up a little, we went to pull the bed covers up, and there it was. The tail of a scorpion peeking out from a fold in the sheet. Sure enough, that was the culprit, which we dispatched very quickly. We had been house-sitting a home while we were waiting to get our own place. This home was near a drainage ditch, which the next day we were told was a usual place for scorpions to claim as their turf, and they tended to search for food at night. Further, we heard the common lore that these nefarious critters always traveled in pairs! For a few days, we slept with a certain amount of paranoia, but fortunately, the partner never showed up.

The grandstand of heaven must have had a good chuckle when they saw my “suffering.” I could hardly feign that it was part of my suffering for the Lord; it was just a minor inconvenience compared to the great cloud of witnesses of Hebrews 12 who were the ones who really suffered. The bleachers in heaven include those who:

… experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground. And all these … gained approval through their faith…. (Heb. 11:36–39a)

Hmmm, scorpion stings don’t even warrant a mention. I had a lot to learn!