Coincidence...or God?

In his first semester at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, my husband, Bob, began driving school bus, first as a substitute driver, but within two weeks he had his own route. One spring morning, he picked up the last of his fifty junior high students and was driving fifty miles an hour up Route M in the Ozarks just south of Springfield, Missouri, when suddenly his right front wheel went rolling down the highway ahead of the bus!

"That's when the Lord took over as driver," Bob said.

All he could do was hang on to the steering wheel and pray as the disabled bus careened down the road into the ditch, missing a culvert pipe by a fraction of an inch. If the axle had connected with that culvert pipe, the bus would have flipped.

It had rained for a day or two before the accident, softening the earth in the ditch.The driveway over the culvert funneled the bus squarely into the soft ditch, slowing the bus, keeping it upright, and preventing the gas tanks from catching fire. The front wheel wells inverted as the dirt pushed up into the undercarriage. Bob saw that and was sure his legs would be broken, but the bus came to a stop just in time.

If you've ever ridden a bus full of junior high students, you know they are a noisy bunch. That morning, during the accident those students didn't make a sound. You could hear the proverbial pin drop. Bob quickly instructed several larger boys to open the back door and help all the students jump out. The bus was totaled, but no one was hurt.

The investigation revealed that when the bus had been serviced, the cotter pin that keeps the large nut in place that holds the wheel on had not been put back on. The wheel had gradually worked its way over until it came off.

A member of the school board and a reporter for the Springfield newspaper were driving behind the bus and saw the entire accident. Bob was commended for safely wrecking a school bus!

Later, Bob drove me along his bus route to show me where it had happened. The accident occurred on the only straight-of-way on the entire route. The rest of the way was full of hairpin curves, drop offs to rivers below, bridges on curves. If that wheel had come off at any other spot on that road, there would have been a terrible tragedy.

Coincidence, you say? I believe God was watching over my husband and that bus load of kids.  The Lord "redeems me from death" (Psalm 103:4, NLT).

Stepping Stones

Today, let me encourage those who are seeking employment in this difficult job market.

I've written previously about how my husband, Bob, a career officer in the Army, resigned his regular commission after six years of active duty to answer God's call to full-time ministry. In January 1973, we moved from Arizona to Springfield, Missouri, where he enrolled for the spring semester at Central Bible College to prepare for the ministry.

The G.I. Bill would cover his tuition, but I would need to work full time to cover our rent and other living expenses. We had enough savings to see us through until March 1, but I had to find a job by then. After getting settled in our rental house, I began the wearying task of job hunting, praying that God would lead me to the job He had for me.

Because Springfield is a six college town, February is the most difficult time of year to find a job there. With an abundance of workers, all available positions had already been filled. I have a degree in elementary education and music, but school districts don't hire mid-term.

So, I checked out the Classified section of the newspaper and the employment office and went on a couple of interviews but was declared "overqualified." I asked my Sunday school class to pray that I'd find a job. One lady in the class told me that the Trailmobile dealership where she worked was looking for an accounts payable bookkeeper. In high school I had taken bookkeeping, so I applied and was hired on (you guessed it) March 1! The Lord is never too late, but sometimes to stretch our faith, He waits until the last minute!

Six months later, I was given two weeks notice that I was being laid off. I shed a few tears then prayed. Once again, God's timing was perfect. By the end of the first week, I was hired as a copywriter for the Advertising Department at the Assemblies of God Headquarters--with an increase in pay!

While I had good writing skills, after the trial three months, it was decided that copy writing for advertising was not my style. More tears. What would I do now? At the last moment, I was given a temporary secretarial job in the Youth Department. When that ended, the position of editorial assistant for the three youth magazines, Youth Alive, Hisway, and CAM opened up unexpectedly. I was in the right place at the right time, and again, my pay increased. The editors encouraged me to submit my own short stories and articles on a freelance basis, and several of them were published in the youth magazines as well as other in house magazines, including The Pentecostal Evangel.

Two years later, I felt the Lord leading me to transfer to the Church School Literature Department, where I wrote and edited Vacation Bible School materials. Before long, I was also writing Sunday School and Children's Church curriculum on assignment. After my husband completed seminary and we moved to Upstate New York to plant a new church, I continued writing curriculum on assignment for Gospel Publishing House for the next 25 years.Not only did my husband get his ministry degrees, but God led me into a lifelong ministry of writing that now includes two published books and another one on the way.

An old hymn says, "God leads His dear children along." That has certainly been my experience. The job changes were difficult and required stepping out in faith, but when one door closed, God opened another. The setbacks were really God's stepping stones.

How has God led you?

Careening into Blackness

What do you do when a Pontiac GTO going 60 miles per hour suddenly plows into the back of your stopped Volkswagen square back, sending you careening into blackness?

My husband was in Vietnam in 1969. It was the end of the Labor Day weekend, and I was driving back to my home in Anchorage, Alaska, after visiting my folks in Valdez. A friend rode along on the six-hour drive each way. It was dark when, nine miles from home, I rounded a bend in the two-lane highway to find two moose skittering down the frosty road.

No one wants a ton of moose landing on their hood, let alone two of them, especially when the engine is in the rear of a Volkswagen. Since no one was immediately behind me, I stopped. The moose wandered to the side of the road as I downshifted to go on. At that moment, two cars appeared around the bend and passed me. I honked my horn to warn them. Then, WHAM!

A blinding jolt! I screamed, "Oh, Jesus, help us!" I blacked out momentarily then hung on for the ride of my life. Scared I would hit a tree, I pushed my foot on the brake as hard as I could, laying down 32 feet of rubber on the roadway before veering off and rolling over and over as though in slow motion. It seemed to take forever before my car finally came to rest on its right side.

The windshield had popped out. I was hanging in the seat belt above my passenger, my head lolling from side to side. Was my neck was broken?

Almost immediately, people appeared. I didn't want them to move me, but they convinced me it was necessary. They laid us gently on the cold ground. All I could think about was my husband, who was in a war zone, thinking I was safe at home. What if I was paralyzed? What if I died?

An ambulance soon arrived. Without stabilizing my neck, the attendants picked me up to put me on the stretcher. In the darkness, one of them stepped on my long hair, yanking my head back. Certain they would paralyze me, I screamed for them to stop. They laid me back down, and I reached up to smooth my hair under my head so they could pick me up.

Thank God, X-rays showed my neck was not broken. The force of the impact broke the back of my seat, which fell flat just as the engine cover flew up and hit me across the bony point at the base of my skull. If it had hit any lower, it would have taken my head off. Instead, it gave me a five-inch gash, which bled profusely and required eight stitches, and a severe whiplash. Later medical technology revealed two herniated disks that I still suffer the effects of, but I'm alive and I'm not paralyzed.

Amazingly, no one else was seriously hurt. My passenger had a cracked rib from the seat belt. The driver of the GTO was uninjured, although his car was totaled too. He had had a few beers and was following too closely to the cars in front of him so he didn't realize I was stopped.

Isn't it amazing that the God by whom all things were created and are held together hears our cry in the time of trouble and is there to help us? When danger smacks you in the face (or back!), do you cry out to God? I know firsthand that He is "a very present help in trouble" (Psalm 46:1). How about you?

Beauty from Brokenness

In 1984, a landslide roared down Thunder Mountain just outside of Juneau, Alaska. The tremendous force uprooted everything in its path and wiped out a beautiful stream. Many acres of the mountainside had been stripped bare except for branchless trees like giant toothpicks sticking out of mud and rocks. An ugly scar marred the former beauty.

Ten years later, Steve and Cindy Bowhay purchased the land to reclaim the once-beautiful stream. They planned ponds with flowers, waterfalls cascading from pool to pool down the mountainside, and a nature trail that would be easy to negotiate by foot or by motorized carts for an interactive view of a pristine Alaskan rain forest. The trail would end with a scenic vista of Gastineau Channel and Lynn Canal from the 580-foot level. They named it Glacier Gardens.

To begin the project, Steve rented an excavator for 30 days. On the last day, after no mishaps, he found a beautiful 6-foot-wide flat rock weighing 4,000 pounds that would be perfect for the waterfall. In the process of getting it, the excavator backed into an uprooted tree, spinning the machine sideways. A log jammed through the engine cowling and caused several thousand dollars worth of damage.

Frustrated and angry at himself, Steve calmly placed the rock where he wanted it then picked up the tall tree stump, raised it as high as the excavator arm would go, and rammed the stump into the ground upside down. His anger appropriately vented, he glanced at the upside down tree and had a sudden inspiration. Why not make a hanging garden in the sprawling root system now high above his head? He could nestle flowerbeds in the roots and plant a myriad of colorful petunias and other flowers that would cascade down. He selected 30 more of the numerous uprooted trees, plunged them into the earth in the same way, and created a forest of the most unique flower towers you'll ever see.

When I visited Glaciers Gardens in 2002, I was quite taken with them. This story brought tears to my eyes. Having recently come through a devastating experience that I thought had permanently scarred my life, I was reminded of how God takes our mistakes, our suffering, the ashes of our lives, and creates something stunningly beautiful when we turn everything over to Him. I began to hum the Gaither song, "All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife,/ But He made something beautiful of my life."

Lashed Together

Off the coast of Alaska, tides can be hazardous. They can vary up to twenty-five feet and turn very quickly. A boat was trolling close to shore when the tide turned and was ebbing so fast that the fisherman could not pick up speed fast enough to get away from the shoreline before his boat became stranded. The troller was rocking back and forth on its keel and would soon break apart, destroying his livelihood and endangering his life.

A fellow fisherman farther out to sea saw his plight. Without hesitation, he steered his boat alongside the mired boat and threw lines to the other vessel, lashing them together to form a catamaran, a boat with two parallel hulls connected together--one of the most stable structures afloat. This way, both boats could ride out the low tide together without a threat to either. When high tide returned, they were both able to back off to safer, deeper waters and go their own ways.

Wise King Solomon, the observant writer of Ecclesiastes, pointed out that "two people are better than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble" (4:9-10, NLT). I have found that to be true. I feel safest when walking arm in arm with my husband.

One time while walking by myself across a parking lot, I didn't notice the slight dip until my rubber-soled shoes stuck while my body kept going. I found myself on the ground. Not only had I fallen and broken my wrist, but I couldn't get up, and no one was around to help me up. Fortunately, I had my cell phone in my purse, so I was able to call for help. If my husband had been walking with me, though, I might have stumbled, but I wouldn't have fallen.

Of course, as Paul pointed out in 2 Cor. 6:14-16, we must not enter into partnerships or marriage with unbelievers because two cannot walk together unless they are agreed on the direction to go, but we do need to be willing to "lash ourselves" to others who are in distress and ride out the storm with them to strengthen them in their times of need, and be willing to seek help when we need it.

Jesus is a Friend that sticks closer than a brother. Have you "lashed together" with Him? He will never leave you nor forsake you.

Who has walked with you in your times of distress? Who needs your helping hand today?

One of the "All Things"

My family believes in divine healing. We've experienced it many times. My grandparents received many miraculous healings from God, which are recounted in my book, Frontiers of Faith.

As a young teenager, my mother lay dying of mastoiditis, a severe infection of the bone behind the ear that resulted from a middle ear infection. God healed her in answer to prayer. Years later, when she experienced an attack of gall stones, after prayer, she had no more attacks.

In 1972, when the doctor told my mother that she needed major surgery, she refused, deciding she would trust the Lord to heal her this time too. After months of hemorrhaging, though, she became weaker and weaker. Why didn't God heal me? she wondered, as she finally submitted to surgery.

At the time, my parents were pastoring a small church in Valdez, Alaska. To have the surgery, she had to travel five hundred miles to Fairbanks. Her hospital roommate, upon learning that Mother was a pastor's wife, began to tell her about a ministry need at the Pioneer Home in Fairbanks. Her mother was a resident, she said, and no one ever came to the facility to conduct church services. My mother began to pray that God would send someone to minister to that need.

Little did she know at the time that within the next six months, she and my father would move to Fairbanks. As soon as they were settled, Mother went to the Pioneer Home and offered to hold services. She was told that she could not read the Bible or quote Scriptures to the residents but she could play the piano and sing whatever she wanted to.

What they didn't know was that my mother not only played the piano and had a lovely soprano voice, but she also wrote songs. So she set the Scriptures to music and sang them. Many lives were touched. In the two years my folks lived in Fairbanks, Mother led many of the residents to the Lord, and she was asked to sing at many of their funerals.

Through that experience, Mother came to understand that sometimes God allows His children to go through hard times, even surgery, to work out His purpose in our lives and in the lives of others. If she had not had surgery and met her roommate in the hospital, she would not have learned about that need in the Pioneer Home that she was uniquely gifted to meet.

Didn't God promise in Romans 8:28, 29 that "all things [even surgery] work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose"? How has God proven this verse to be true in your life?

Uniquely Designed

Growing up, I was awed by my mother's creativity. I loved to listen to her play the piano and sing the many songs she composed. She sewed beautiful clothes for us, created her own recipes and cooked delicious meals on a shoestring, decorated our home tastefully at very little expense, even designing and building items of furniture to meet our needs. She taught a children's Sunday school class and wrote her own continued stories to teach life application. She was quite artistic and developed a way of crocheting beautiful decorative ornaments out of clear plastic wrap using her own patterns for three-dimensional angels, snowflakes, snowmen animals, hats, baskets, and flowers.

She was renowned for her baking of pies and cakes. Not only did she decorate cakes for special occasions, she "built" them into special shapes. Once, she created a birthday cake for my father in the shape of a Grumman Goose that really looked like the amphibious planes flown by Alaska Coastal Airlines where he worked. Another time, she made a cake in the shape of an apple for a PTA meeting and figured out how to make the frosting look like a shiny red apple.

One time in church, we were in the middle of viewing a Billy Graham film when the projected broke. She fixed it with a bobby pin, enabling us to see the rest of the story. She could fix anything with a safety pin or paper clip. And she was always inventing new gadgets and better ways of doing things more easily and quickly.

By the time I was a teenager, I felt very lacking in creativity compared to my mother. Then I heard a someone say, "A person can become more creative by deciding to be creative."

God has designed each of us for His purpose and has endowed us all from birth with certain natural talents and abilities to fulfill His purpose for our lives. These talents and abilities are not yet developed, but one aspect of stewardship is to study and exercise our gifts to hone them to usefulness for God's Kingdom. I made up my mind never to refuse to try to do a task someone asked me to do, thinking that if someone thinks I can do it, then with God's help, I probably can.  

At a very young age, I realized God had given me a special voice to sing for Him, so I sang. In addition, I learned to play the piano and the accordion for church. Classmates elected me to leadership positions, and I learned skills that helped me as a minister and pastor's wife. When I worked in editorial for a publishing house, I submitted stories and articles I'd written. To my surprise, they were accepted, and that led to a lifelong vocation of writing. 

As I look back over my life, I find that I too have become more creative and have accomplished more than I ever thought I could. Mother taught me many of her skills. Over the years, in the churches we pastored, I have even done many things outside of my natural gifting. I noticed that by developing the talents I knew I had, I discovered more.

Isn't that what Jesus indicated in the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:21, where God gave more talents to the ones who were faithful in handling the talents God had given them? (Of course, Jesus was referring to money, but I think the same principle applies.) Have you found this to be true? 

You too are uniquely designed. What talents have you developed? What new talent did you discover?