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Battle Creek Michigan 2002 Community Prayer Breakfast
Prayer Breakfast Highlights |
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Sergeant Brandon Hultink of the Battle Creek Police Department has known what it is to lie partially paralyzed from gunshot blasts blazing in the blackness of night. He has felt excruciating pain in his body turn to shock and shock into the creeping coldness of near death. He has known what it is to be begged by his fellow officers to hold on to life while they rush him to Battle Creek Health System and to have surgeons working in the night to save his life.
And he has known what it is to make the journey back to recovery, today walking with a cane and a limp. All of this happened September 24, 2000, when Hultink and two officers were called in the middle of the night to a house in Battle Creek where suspicious activities were reported. They approached the house cautiously but detected movement in a van parked nearby. What happened in the next very few minutes changed Hultink's life forever. Three men who had just committed a robbery opened fire from the van, knocking him to the ground, shattering one knee as he took more hits in the pelvis where an artery was ripped open. He tore at the grass to try to pull himself to safety but could not move. One of his fellow officers risked his life to pull Hultink to safety behind another vehicle while the other created a diversion. Ultimately one of the three suspects was killed. (The other two are now serving prison sentences.) "I was bleeding to death. I was preparing myself mentally to die," Hultink told the thousand or so people from throughout Calhoun County and beyond, gathered at the 21st annual Prayer Breakfast in downtown Battle Creek. It is at moments like these that we often hear how a person's life flashes before his or her eyes, how they think of their children, spouse, or goals they have yet to reach. But not so for Sergeant Hultink, though all of that could have happened. He had just been promoted, was partway through his degree at Cooley Law School, he and his wife Kelly had just had their second child, and, as he says, "We were working on the white picket fence."
He had, by his own account, his life beautifully under control. Until 3:10 am. that night in September. "I wasn't thinking about my money, my kids, my family, not even my wife," he said with enormous certainty. "I was thinking, What is going to happen to me?" Officer Hultink went on to tell the absolutely silent and attentive audience, "I was not living for Christ when this happened I said that I was a Christian if anyone asked me but I only went to church because my wife dragged me there."
But confronted by the reality of his own death he realized, almost too late, that his relationship with God was not what it needed to be. "Eternity is a lot longer than the amount of time we spend on this planet," he said. "When I do see Jesus I don't want it to be a meeting of two people who only spoke once before." Today, at the age of 30, Brandon Hultink continues his work with the Battle Creek Police Department.
Despite the numbness in the lower half of one leg, he says there isn't a thing he would change in his life because of the newfound relationship he has with Christ. He concluded his stirring presentation by challenging the audience: "I am not in control of my life and neither are you." The most important thing in our lives is our relationship with Jesus Christ. If you died today, do you know where you are going to spend eternity?" |
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