Near-death experiences are common enough that twenty thousand cases have been documented and these stories have been published in several well-known books, Death and Dying by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., and Life After Life by Raymond Moody, M.D. just to name a couple–both are available online.

In 19 years, as a chaplain in rehabilitation for stroke, brain injury, spinal cord, and general acute rehabilitation, and several recent years in Behavioral Medicine, I have heard many stories of God’s intervention, transforming grace, and return to life and health after “seeing the light.”

My first such personal experience came when I was eighteen years old and in the service of the United States Navy in naval aviation.  Each weekend I had been taking “liberty” and going to surrounding landlocked towns where the girls were as free-flowing as the beer, especially for those in a naval uniform. 

However, this particular weekend, I was confined to the base for guard duty.  Off duty in the afternoon, I lay down in my top bunk in a vast empty barracks that held three hundred double bunks.  As I lay there, I was surrounded by an intense light that penetrated my entire being.  I basked in the glow of this light losing all consciousness of time.  

To this day, I don’t know if I lay there for in the light for two hours or for two minutes, but the sense of peace and well-being was absolute and it created in me a desire to know the source of this light.  

For the first time in my life, I realized that there was a power much greater than my own, but I couldn’t name it.  Thus, began my search for the source of this power, for I had no known concept or image of God.