“I foresaw the Lord always before my face; for he is on my right hand, that I should not be moved; Therefore, did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope; Because thou wilt not leave my soul in prison, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life; thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance.”
These words were attributed to King David by Peter in Acts, chapter 2 verses 25-28. He said these words concerning Christ. My life hasn’t even approached the magnitude of King David’s life. I’m not even king in my own home. Not that I should be. But when David says, “Thou hast made known to me the ways of life”, I marvel at how similar his life is to any one of us with respect to our relationship to God.
My God is a God of miracles. Daily examples occur if we would only open our eyes to them. My life has been full. The miracles have been a constant thread throughout my life, most of which have gone unnoticed or unappreciated. One event that did get noticed and appreciated occurred a few years ago while I was still working for Unilever in the Wishbone Salad Dressing Department.
It was a pleasant day in April 2000. School was winding down for the year and my wife had just graduated from University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg and was doing some substitute teaching at Blue Springs South High School. I had taken it upon myself to do an audit of the mixing of a certain variety of salad dressing. (We would conduct periodic audits in the mixroom looking for ways to improve the process.) Unfortunately, on this occasion, all the mixing was taking place in the middle of the night, to be packaged the following morning.
I was in the plant by midnight and the audit was completed by the beginning of the first shift. Since I was on an improvement committee scheduled to meet that morning, I stayed around for it. It was one of the few meetings I actually stayed awake for before or since.
Following the meeting, I headed for home. I had no indications that I was going to have any trouble. I felt alert, but was anxious to get home. I remember approaching Robert’s Nursery on 40 Highway, but the next thing I remember I was bouncing around in my Red Dodge Dakota. Apparently, I had fallen asleep. The truck had gone straight ahead while the highway had curved sharply to the left.
I woke up just in time to try to regain control of my truck, but there was absolutely no controlling it. I tried pulling it back to the road to no avail. I hit a concrete culvert ripping off the left rear wheel and at the same time narrowly missing a grove of trees. Another 20 yards, the truck left rear hit a tree turning the truck sideways. Its momentum caused it to rip through a wooden fence, rolling over and landing gracefully on its wheels (or what was left of them) a few feet from a young family’s swing set.
About 20 minutes later, my wife received a call from the Blue Springs Police Department telling her that her husband was in an accident and that he was alright. She went to the high school office and someone said, ”It must be a day for accidents, because the PE teacher’s neighbor called and said there was a pickup in their back yard and their fence was down.
Throughout all this the airbags did not deploy, but my rescuers were unable to get me out without using the Jaws of Life to rip off the driver’s side door. By the time all that was over, there wasn’t a square inch of that truck that didn’t have some sort of damage to it. I had a little pain in my side that made it difficult to move and a small cut on my hand from all the broken glass, but I was otherwise unhurt. The most discomfort was being strapped to a hard, straight board and being bounced around all the way to the hospital in Independence.
Shortly afterward, I discovered I had a mild condition of hypothyroidism which I believe contributed to my dropping off to sleep without any warning. God has intervened in my life more times than I can count and more times than I have realized at the time. While the truck was leaving the road and bumping into things and rolling over, I felt assured that I was going to be alright and that God would take care of me this time.
Throughout scripture, miracles were associated with preaching the Kingdom of God to those who would listen. Each one of us can learn from our daily experiences and can learn more of what God has in store for us when Zion becomes a reality. In the beginning paragraph, I quoted from Acts which, in turn, was a quote from Psalm 16. David begins this psalm by saying, “Preserve me, O God; for in thee do I put my trust.” He concludes this Psalm by saying, “Thou wilt show me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” To all those who read this, may you trust in the Lord and experience firsthand the joys and pleasures that God has in store for you both in this life and the next.
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