Tuesday, November 28, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Days of reckoning
In the movie business, days of reckoning mean big bucks. So blockbusters about the last days pour out of Hollywood. But they pass us by like whispers in the night, signifying nothing.
Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be powerful earthquakes, famines and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.
Jesus told us not to listen to the doomsayers or the predictors or the plague prophets. “Do not follow them!” Because far more will happen in the world than anything we can even imagine. It will get much worse before it gets better.
Remain faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
We know several people who nearly died, and then God brought them back. Their healing might have been called miraculous by others, but in every case those healings were certainly miraculous to them. In their suffering their hearts were broken, broken open so God could pour in his love, blessing, mercy, and grace. Sounds like a recipe, but no … this is undeserving gift. Every time. And since their personal moment of healing, these friends have never been the same.
As for me?
One moment of healing, broken heart, pouring in began on a fall night outside Kutztown, Pennsylvania. I was driving an old Ford van with no front. My friend David W. sat beside me. Our Valpo philosophy professor Dodd’s son Justin slept in the back. Dodds had a gig at the Folk Festival flying his hot air balloon, and we were headed back to his friend’s house for the night.
“Be careful, David. The brakes are weak.”
David and I were talking about the meaning of life as we headed down a hill. I pressed on the brake pedal but it went to the floor. Dodds and the rest of his family and were in front of us. They rounded a wide curve at the bottom of the hill.
I felt an eerie calm. “What’s wrong?” David W’s eyes were wide, I’m sure. We slid through the curve at the bottom of the hill and the frontless van crashed head-on, straight into a large tree.
Everything stopped.
I heard my wife Anneke, riding in the car ahead, shouting my name. The windshield glass cracked right up to my face, and the steering column came to rest high between my legs. It took a few seconds, and I began to feel how trapped I was. My door was jammed and wouldn’t open. But the engine had stopped. There was no fire. No hurry. Such a complete calm.
Justin had flown up from the back. His head hit the visor rather than the windshield, and he fell out of the sprung passenger door, facedown into a puddle left from that day’s early rain. David W. stepped on him in the dark and picked him up. Justin did not, therefore, drown.
We had no cellphones. No ambulance came. Someone ran ahead to our friend’s house. Someone took Justin to the hospital. He had a bruised kidney, they said, and released him the next day.
I scrambled up the hill after being dragged out of the van. Black and clear, the sky was full of stars and stars and stars. I screamed at the sky, the stars, at God, angry at myself for not doing SOMETHING to keep this from happening.
Dodds’ friends brought their truck and drove us home. We sat at midnight drinking tea. Weeping. We comforted each other. I began to forgive myself. God’s forgiveness, with skin on, covered everyone that night for everything, and at last we slept.
Ever since, 54 years, forgiveness – God’s forgiveness – has poured out on me. Love, blessing, mercy and grace. I know God’s gift has no ending.
We rented a trailer to pull the balloon home behind his car full of people. In Dodd’s home country of Ohio, he asked me to drive while he took a nap in the back seat. I was hesitant. We headed down a long hill. I sped up when the trailer began to swing from side to side. It was getting worse.
“Take your foot off the accelerator, Dave,” Dodds said in a quiet voice. I did. The car straightened out. Dodds went back to sleep. His forgiveness and trust was palpable. God’s forgiveness, for both of us, was permanent.
The great God has revealed to the king what shall be in the future; this is exactly what you dreamed, and its meaning is sure. Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.
 (Daniel 2, Daniel 3, Revelation 2, Luke 21)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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