by Amy Newmark
The truck driver and car driver both appeared uninjured. They stood next to each other writing on scraps of paper while the faint sound of sirens grew slowly louder. As my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel relaxed, I looked around, still half-expecting to see a dog dragging a broken chain. Yet there was no sign of him. It was as though he’d never existed. I looked back at the accident scene and a thought struck me. Were it not for a bedraggled brown dog and the grace of God . . . Suddenly my spine stiffened and gooseflesh pimpled my arms. Had I stopped to save a stray dog or had a stray dog stopped to save me?
My heart pounded as I recalled how fast I’d been racing down the road, distracted by dozens of thoughts. If I hadn’t stopped, it would probably have been my car that rounded the blind turn and hit the truck. I closed my eyes and breathed a prayer of thanks. My disappointment over missing the interview melted away. All that remained in my heart was an overwhelming sense of gratitude and peace.
It’s funny how even the most trivial of events may prove to have a purpose beyond human understanding. Though I didn’t get the job I’d hoped for that day, a much better opportunity came along later—one that changed my career path forever. I know it wasn’t only coincidence that brought a stray dog briefly into my life one sunny afternoon. He’d been sent to protect and guide me, a special four-footed answer to a hastily offered prayer. And for that, I’ll always be grateful.
~Pat Wahler
Not Interested
Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your purpose.
~Aristotle
“No, no. Thank you, but I’m not interested.” I hung up the phone, a bit annoyed by the persistence of the telemarketing representative. “I’m not interested,” I had said. I wondered why that had not been enough to discourage the telephone barrage.
My thoughts suddenly centered on those words—“not interested.” It hadn’t been so long ago that I had said that very same phrase in regard to my singing schedule. Many concerts and seminars had occupied my time so completely that I was exhausted. I wanted to take a week off and just stay home.
A phone call was my first hint that God had other plans. The pastor of a church in Crane, Texas called to invite me to come and minister in his church. He wanted me to sing a concert and to share my testimony the very next Sunday night. I did happen to have the date open, but I was really counting on worshiping in my church that Sunday—in the pew, not from the platform.
“I’m just really not interested,” I had said. “It would be such a long drive, and I just got back from a weeklong revival. Maybe another time?” The pastor accepted my regrets and we hung up.
An hour later, I answered the phone only to hear that same pastor’s voice once again. He had contacted several businessmen in the church and asked them to underwrite my plane ticket. Cheerfully and full of expectation, he offered to send me this plane ticket if I would reconsider coming to his church. “See?” he prodded. “God wants you to come to Crane.”
I was not happy. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to sing. I didn’t want to share. I didn’t want to minister. Hadn’t he heard me say I wasn’t interested? But, in my heart, I knew that he was right. I knew that it wasn’t coincidence that I was free the Sunday the church wanted me to come. I was sure that the plane ticket was God’s confirmation that I was to go to Crane. In fact, I had felt it in my spirit all along, but I was hoping that God would let me slide by.
God doesn’t work that way. Never has, never will. It’s not his way to let his children slide—not when there’s a need to be met—not when there’s a miracle just beyond the turn in the road, or in this case, the aisle of the airplane.
The crowd in the Crane church was small that Sunday night, probably less than two hundred. I sang. I shared. I prayed with a little girl at the altar. Then I went home. “What was the point?” I asked myself. “There was no great outpouring, no deluge of souls at the altar.” It had been a meaningful but quiet service. Maybe I should have stayed home after all.
A month went by. Two months. Three. On June 5th, I routinely looked through my mail. “Hmmm. A letter from Crane,” I mused. “Why won’t those people leave me alone? I’ve never really been interested.” I opened the letter and began to read.
Dear Elaine,
When you gave your concert in Crane back in April, our twelve-year-old daughter, Sabrina, went to hear you. I’m sorry to say my husband and I didn’t go. When she came back, she told me how beautiful it was and how much it meant to her . . . On the night of April 27, a tornado struck just as we were trying to leave our trailer home, and it picked our car up, setting it down on her little body. She was killed instantly . . . Today, I was going through her Bible and near the back of it, she had written, ‘Elaine helped me find God.’ I wanted to share this with you and tell you how thankful I am for fine people like you who give their testimony in song and other ways and touch the hearts of little girls like our precious daughter.
I bowed my head in shame. Tears began to pour down my face, down my neck, and even to my chest, wetting my shirt. I dropped to my knees and ultimately lay on my face before the Lord, begging his forgiveness. How callous I had been! How selfish!
I was changed after reading that letter—forever unequivocally changed. And I was never again able to so frivolously close the door on an invitation to give of myself, no matter how tired I thought I was. Sometimes, God brings about his miracles through his people.
Not interested? How could I ever have said that? What could ever be more exciting and fulfilling than being part of God’s timing? I was a live extension of his hand, offering the answer to a child’s question that none of us even knew she had. Later, the discovery of a simple commemoration of that night brought comfort to a mother who laid her child’s body in a grave but found solace in the thought that she was really in the arms of God.
I had said I wasn’t interested. Fortunately, God was, and always will be.
~Eloise Elaine Ernst Schneider
Voicemail from God
Everything that occurs in your life is part of God’s plan to wake you up.
~Leonard Jacobson
The bus was cold. The temperature outside was, in fact, at least ten degrees below average for early November. Being a local TV weatherman, those kinds of statistics were often in my thoughts, but at the moment I was trying to forecast my own personal future. A week earlier, my boss had called me into his office to give me the standard line: “We’re going in a different direction.” Simply put, I was being replaced, just like that. There was no public announcement, but I had a month to figure out my next move, and I had no idea where I was headed.
It was a short bus ride back to the TV station from downtown. During a break between the morning and midday newscasts, I had visited the office of a former co-worker, wanting to pick his brain about his life since leaving television. I had often thought about changing careers, and though the conversation with him had been informative, I wasn’t sure the time was right for me to enter a new line of work. Even more confused than ever about my prospects, I stared out the drizzle-soaked window of the bus (at least I got the forecast right) and remembered that old saying, “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” Well, there certainly were no windows opening for me. I half-prayed in my mind—God, help me!
Arriving back at the TV station, I grabbed the latest computer printouts from the National Weather Service and sat down at my desk to update my weather maps. The red message light on my phone was blinking. Looking up from the papers, I punched in my voicemail code. “You have one message,” the electronic voice told me, “sent today at 10:14 a.m.”
I listened as a female voice I had never heard before timidly spoke over traffic noise in the background. She sounded like she was at a payphone. “You don’t know me,” the voice said. “We’ve never met.”
I sighed. Another weather fan, I guessed. I listened as the woman cleared her throat and continued. “I was on the bus a little whil
e ago and saw you.”
Get to the point, I thought. She did. “I don’t know if you’ll understand this or not.” She hesitated. Then, apparently gathering courage, she blurted out, “God told me to tell you that He holds your future.”
The caller suddenly had my undivided attention.
She went on. “He says everything’s going to be okay. So . . . that’s it, I guess. I just wanted you to know. Bye.” And then she hung up.
I stared at the phone for a few seconds, dumbfounded. Impossible! How could this woman know? Did God really speak to her? Was this some kind of sick joke?
Even as I asked the questions, I sensed that I already knew the answers. It certainly didn’t seem like a joke. And why couldn’t God speak through others? After all, I had asked God for His help. (It may have been a half-hearted prayer, but here was a whole-hearted answer.) Besides, I knew that what this mystery woman said was true. For most of my life I had believed in a God Who knows us intimately, loves us unconditionally, and cares about us individually. I was ashamed to admit that over the past few days fear and worry had caused me to forget how much He cares. I had needed a reminder.
And what a reminder it was. As her words sank in, shock began to give way to peace. Over the next few days, a mountain of fear began to melt away and an ocean of thankfulness took its place. Yes, it was going to be okay. God had told her, and she had told me.
The woman never called again. I would never learn her identity. But now nearly twenty years later, reporting the weather on television in a different city, I often think of the woman’s astounding voicemail message. And I remind myself to never stop trusting the voice of the One Who spoke through her that day.
~Nick Walker
Riding Shotgun
Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.
~Author Unknown
I was a miracle child. Well, that is what my parents always told me. My mother’s doctor said that she would likely never have children. But after many prayers for a baby and sixteen years of marriage, I arrived. And how my parents loved me! I was the focus of their lives. My mother was my confidante and counselor. We talked about everything. My father was my teacher and protector. I never felt afraid when he was near. Dad kept me safe.
Excitement and anxiety were high in our home when I hit seventeen and got my learner’s permit. My parents celebrated my burgeoning independence, yet they were also concerned for my wellbeing. I begged my mother to teach me to drive. She reluctantly gathered the keys and glanced around her in the vague hope that someone else would take her place. She started my lesson in the empty gravel parking lot of our community swim club. There, I drove our boat of a Buick around and around a center island of trees. I successfully avoided hitting the maples, so Mom let me drive the few back streets home. At each stop sign and with every oncoming car, she stomped on an imaginary brake and fingered her rosary. “I have survived,” she told my dad when we returned home. “Now, it’s your turn.”
And Dad took over permanently. He had the right stuff for the job. My father was a B-17 pilot during World War II. He flew his bomber, the Lady Lylian, wingtip to wingtip with his squadron. He navigated through thunderstorms using only the plane’s instruments. On one occasion, the airplane’s compass froze, and he used a thirty-cent novelty store compass to find his way back to base. After forty missions, Dad brought his entire crew home safely.
His flying expertise translated to his driving. My father drove our family on vacations across the United States — from North Dakota to Florida and everywhere in between. As a young child, I would stretch out on the back seat and fall asleep, lulled by his steady driving and the warm sun streaming through the window. I felt secure. In his sixty years of driving, Dad never had an accident.
I remember one snowy afternoon when Dad came to pick me up from grammar school. He noticed a group of my friends walking through the blowing snow and offered them a ride. They piled into the back. Dad was nearly to the top of Tank Hill when the car started to slide backwards. He pumped the brakes, but the car continued to slip. The kids screamed. Dad simply turned around, looked out the rear window, and steered the car safely to the bottom of the hill. He would be the perfect driving teacher for me—experienced and unshakable.
On our first time out, Dad tossed me the keys to his prized Mercedes. He settled comfortably in the passenger’s seat. “Where to?” he asked me.
Over the next months, we wended through little towns, braved hair-raising Route 17, and traveled the New Jersey Turnpike—boxed in by eighteen-wheelers. My father kept his cool through it all. Every once in a while, he directed me in even tones. “Remember you can always use the brake,” he told me. “Check your blind spot and ease over.” Dad taught me the trick of accelerating out of a curve to make the driving smoother and that slowing in a downpour improves visibility.
One afternoon, I drove him to his friend Nino’s house. “How is your dad as a driving instructor?” Nino asked me.
“He’s really relaxed,” I said. “Today, he even fell asleep.”
“I wasn’t sleeping. I fainted from fear,” said Dad, laughing.
After many miles of practice, I got my driver’s license. I was a bit nervous about my first solo drive. “You’ll be fine,” my father told me. And I knew I would be.
Years later, I was driving to pick up my fiancé from the United States Military Academy at West Point. I entered onto the Palisades Parkway, which parallels the Hudson River, and my car was engulfed in thick fog. I couldn’t see much in front of me. As soon as possible, I turned around and went home. The trip had left me rattled, but my dad offered to sit beside me if I wanted to try again.
We traveled slowly through the fog. “Don’t use the bright lights because they reflect off the fog,” he said. “Now, use the white line to your right as a guide.” We made it to West Point and back intact.
My cadet and I married. After our third child was born, I decided to enroll in graduate school. I was worried about the lengthy drive to campus. “It’s a long commute,” I told my father.
“What an adventure!” he encouraged.
I lost my beloved father to liver cancer a week before my first semester. Late one autumn night, I was driving home from class on a lonely stretch of dark highway. Suddenly, my father’s baritone voice filled the car. “Look out for deer,” he said. I wasn’t startled or frightened to hear his voice. It was like old times with him riding shotgun and keeping me safe. A few miles later, a massive buck was standing, unmoving, in the middle of my lane. I was ready. I hit the brakes and eased into the next lane, just as Dad had taught me.
~Marie-Therese Miller
Is Anyone Listening?
Evening, morning and noon I will pray and cry aloud and He shall hear my voice.
~Psalm 55:17
“I’m done with you, God. I don’t think you’re listening anyway, but if you are, I’m done.” It was no spur-of-the-moment decision. It was the end of a long struggle with depression and an overwhelming sense of failure.
I was pastor of a small church, and my income was inadequate for a family of four. To provide the things I wanted for my two daughters, I worked extra jobs. I kept those jobs private as much as possible. Working extra jobs would have made me look like a failure, I thought. I was trying to maintain an image of success.
I drove a nice car, but it was a gift from my father-in-law. Unable to afford medical insurance, my daughters’ births had been paid for with cash from my pocket. My wife had a major car wreck when she was pregnant, and the bills had piled up.
In reality, I had nothing to complain about. Everyone in my family was healthy. My daughters filled our house with laughter and love. We had a decent home to live in. To the rest of the world, we looked successful. But I felt that I had nothing, and that was the whole point of my depression: how I felt.
I felt no joy in marriage. How could a wife respect a husband who had no respect for himself? My daughters respected me only because they
were not old enough to know what a loser I was. That’s the way I felt. Now they were coming to an age where they would know.
My church had no idea that I battled depression. I preached hope and inspiration on Sundays, then went home to wonder why I couldn’t have done it better, why I wasn’t effective, why I wasn’t loved, why my income was so small.
For months I had stayed up late, long after my wife and girls had gone to bed. I would sit up and read until my eyes finally closed, until my head finally nodded, and only then I would trudge to my bed and try to find some relief in sleep.
So it was on that fateful night when the stress of bills and relationships finally took its toll. It was well past midnight when my head finally nodded. In my fatigue, I closed a book and laid it on the coffee table. Before I could rise from the sofa, something in me snapped and said, “Enough!”
I slid off the couch and onto the floor, froze on my knees for a moment, and then slid forward until I lay pitifully with my face buried in the fibers of the carpet, my arms outstretched. In this prostrate position I finally divorced myself from hope that God was going to help me. That’s when I uttered, “I’m done with you, God. I don’t think you’re listening anyway, but if you are, I’m done.”
I rose, resolute now that I had decided it was time to move on. I went quickly to bed. Almost angrily I undressed in the dark, throwing my shirt on the floor. My wife’s soft snoring irritated me. If I was leaving God, maybe I would leave her too. I didn’t know. I just knew I had done something big, something final.
Sleep came at some point, but it didn’t last long. Around two o’clock, the stillness was pierced by the ringing of the phone. When a pastor’s phone rings at 2 a.m., it usually means tragedy has struck. I fumbled in the dark until my hand hit the phone, and answered with my best pastoral voice.