Teleology
Both our schools and our culture tell us God no longer exists. They rarely come right out and say it, but the tacit message is pervasive, nonetheless. We are taught that we arose de novo from the primordial ooze due to forces we now fully understand, and that we seem to no longer need God. The implication is that God was an intellectual construct that humans of a more primitive era contrived to explain things that nowadays we better appreciate as natural occurrences. However, that’s not the way this kid saw it.
He told me he prayed harder than he had ever prayed before. He prayed like a life depended on it. Then he opened his eyes, looked down at the ground, and there it was. Resting between his feet next to that conflagrating automobile was a big rusty crescent wrench.
The kid snatched up the wrench and swung it at the car window with every ounce of his strength. The glass exploded. He reached inside and pulled the dazed woman through the jagged hole to safety just as the flames reached the cockpit, lacerating his hands fairly badly in the process. His dad returned in time to ensure everyone was clear before the car became fully involved. The kid relayed all these details with the purity, passion and sincerity of childhood while I sewed his hands back together.
