Some time ago, a friend told me that he is old and wise now because God protected him when he was young and foolish. I can certainly identify with that statement. I want to share with you a few of the times God saved me from death or serious injury.
As a young child, I came down with every childhood disease you can name; mumps, measles, chicken pox and whooping cough to name a few. When I was nine, I was home recuperating from the measles when the old farmhouse we were renting caught fire. My mom and I just got out in time before it burned to the ground along with everything we owned except the clothes we were wearing. Three years later I had a respiratory illness our family doctor was treating as flu, but I continued to get worse. My grandmother was babysitting for a young doctor and his wife. She told him my symptoms and he told her to have my mom bring me to his clinic. He diagnosed it as histoplasmosis, caused by airborne spores from dried bird droppings and had me in the hospital that day. l was sent home for six months of total bed rest. You can image how that went for a twelve year old. I developed a cough again and that young doctor told my parents that if it was a recurrence of the histoplasmosis there was nothing else he could do for me. He came back with a huge smile and said that it was pneumonia and sent me back to the hospital for treatment. I recovered and was healthy when I graduated from high school and joined the Air Force.
As a nineteen-year-old airman on Okinawa, a typhoon hit the island with 80 mile per hour winds and heavy rain that was blowing horizonal. A cable was strung up between my barracks and the compound where I worked. I went hand over hand with the wind and rain taking me completely off of my feet. The only thing keeping me from blowing away was my grip on the cable and God’s grip on me.
When I was twenty-eight, I was running a sales route for a coffee company out of Burlington, Iowa. I loaded my panel truck to the roof one morning and headed to Cedar Rapids. About halfway there, I was driving 65 on a two-lane highway when I heard a poof and suddenly began to fishtail. A car coming from the opposite direction missed me somehow just as my truck rolled and wound up on the driver side partially on a barbed wire fence. The windshield popped out during the roll, so I loosened my seat belt and climbed out through the windshield. I didn’t have a scratch or bruise on me, and my load wasn’t damaged.
Several months ago, one of my caregivers exposed me to Covid-19. At first it seemed like a very weak case, but it began to affect my mind and my speech, so my friend had me rushed to the hospital. I know I was in the hospital for two weeks undergoing tests and treatment, but I have no memory of any of it. My mind had cleared by the time I was transferred to a rehab facility for another three weeks. Today I feel healthier and stronger than I did before I got sick.
Any one of those events in my life could have turned out much different without God’s protection on my life. The Psalmist describes it in Psalms 91:1. “Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty,” I am still here because God has more for me to do for His Glory.