Miracles Exist

I have a remarkable friend I met through my medical clinic. We’ll call him Fred. People who look like Fred are the reason you and I carry guns every day. Fred is terrifying. Big, tall and muscular with a shaved head and flaming devil tattoos all over his arms, He’s the very image of a hard, scary man. In fact, he was indeed a hard, scary man. And then, Fred met Jesus.

That introduction changed absolutely everything. Fred walked away from drugs, violence, alcohol and everything else that defined his former life overnight. He became something entirely fresh and new.

We want superheroes. We want fire from heaven. That’s not the way God rolls. For the guy who spoke the universe into existence, fire from heaven seems fairly crass. The real miracle is Fred and me. It is that God could take something so terribly flawed and then miraculously transform it into something both wholesome and good.

Details

A fringe benefit of this otherwise-inexplicable transformation came in the form of a brand-new family. Fred’s wife was substantially younger than him. In time, he also had a daughter. With Fred now well into middle age, that little three-year-old girl was his entire world.

Fred makes his living as an auto mechanic. He has his own shop and employs a redneck guy as an apprentice. His buddy is a bit of a rescue himself. He is good as gold, but like Fred, he has a past.

Fred’s word is his bond nowadays, and he would sooner die than cheat anybody. Those are marketable skills for an auto mechanic. His shop is forever crowded as a result.

One Heartbeat Away

Fred was stretched out on a creeper working underneath a car that was up on jacks. His buddy was across the shop absorbed in something else. Fred was trying to break a stubborn bolt loose. He hooked up his wrench and threw his back into it. That’s when the car fell off of the jacks. He was on his back underneath the car with his legs facing outward. The side of the frame came down squarely across his chest. Fred described the sensation like being in a vise. He knew in an instant that he was a dead man.

The weight of the car kept him from respiring. Without being able to breathe, Fred had about 10 seconds before the pressure on his chest rendered him unconscious. He put that brief time to good use.

There are some strange things that happen to a person under such circumstances as that. I have myself once been in a similar state. Someday, when the time is right, I’ll tell you all about it. In Fred’s case, he struggled briefly but realized on a visceral level that it was hopeless. As a result, with what little life he had remaining, he simply prayed.

Fred was the product of a pretty ghastly home life. That tragic brokenness is what pushed him toward the dark spaces where Jesus had first found him. With his last spark of consciousness, Fred pleaded with God not to let his little girl grow up without a Daddy. And then, everything went black.

The Light

Fred said his next conscious thought was out from under the car in the light of the shop. His chest hurt unimaginably, but he could breathe again. His shop buddy was poised over him, cradling his head. Fred glanced back over his shoulder to see the car now resting solidly on the floor. His first instinct was gratitude.

Fred was unable to sit up, but he took his friend’s hand in his own and thanked him profusely for getting him out from underneath the car. With tears streaming down his face, his buddy said he hadn’t done anything. He had sensed the car fall from the other side of the shop. By the time he had sprinted around the side, he had seen and heard the vehicle subsequently thump against the concrete floor. Fred was still on his creeper alongside the vehicle when he got there, unconscious but alive.

Fred said that his chest was terribly sore, but he was otherwise unhurt. His face and shoulders were not scraped as though he had been dragged out from underneath the vehicle, and there were no broken bones. Within a few days, he was fine.

Ruminations

Fred relayed this story to me himself one day in the clinic. Imagine you are being told it not by me in print, but rather by this hulking, scary-looking guy weeping like a child. It was a powerful moment for us both.

People claim there are no miracles these days. Many assert that there actually never have been. Fred respectfully disagrees.

I would counter that we don’t see the miracles because we are all too busy to notice. They’re still out there. We just have to seek them out like our lives depend upon them. Keep this in mind as we head into the new year.

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