Memory from a year ago.
As a Christian I don't believe in luck or even coincidences. I belong to a sovereign God who is in complete control of what happens to me, but He has also given me a free will, so my choices, whether good or bad, are aways also a part of what happens to me.
Milan and I have gone over the events of the last 36 hours several times. Milan keeps a very close eye on our property. He knew the hickory tree had some problems but it was still budding out annually and providing beautiful shade and following the cycle of life and he had every reason to believe it still had many years. It had a sister tree of equal size standing very close to it when we moved there in 1983. After a time that tree began to show signs of inner decay and was leaning toward the house so we had it professionally removed several years ago. But this tree had withstood so many windstorms in its 100+ years of life that we never dreamed it was in that much a state of decay.
(There is a sermon in all that which I will write someday!)
We believe God was watching over us in so many ways Sunday morning. For one thing Milan often parked his old Chevy pickup (91) in that spot in the driveway because it gave him a shorter quicker route to the door when he was unloading a major grocery haul, sometimes making 3 or 4 trips back and forth into the house after shopping for hours when he had been on his feet cutting hair many hours. At that point, every step counts.
Right before we went to bed that night he mentioned just leaving the truck there, but the windows were down (it does not have air conditioning) so he decided he had better go on out and move it under the carport and roll the windows up. A wise nudge from the Lord because if he had not moved it it would have been a flat chunk of blue metal by daylight.
But here's the most important part to us. Every evening before we go to bed we pray together and we use a written list of all the prayer needs we know about.
After praying for everybody from Joe Biden on down the line (yes seriously) through friends and family, I close the prayer with the words "Lord, keep our family safe tonight, and keep us safe here in our home through the night."
I started using this exact phrase a couple of years ago when we began sleeping separately in different rooms of the house because the only place we had to put my hospital bed was back in my office, as far away from our big king size bed as you could get.
I've often worried about a house fire and I lost the feeling of safety I had always had when sleeping in the same room with him. I expressed my fear and he said perhaps it would help if our nightly prayer included a specific petition for safety during the night when I didn't have his physical presence, so I began using the prayer for safety "in our home" during the night. It probably had become more of a habit than an urgent request, but that's the first thing I thought of when I realized the danger we had been in "in our home" during the night.
I won't ever take that phrase so casually again!
What a Mighty God we serve!
© joanrowdenhart June 2022
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