The Call Project
A Collection of Spiritual Stories for Spiritual Growth
by Matthew A. Forck, A K-Crof Industries Product
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
The
Diaper Miracle
We
never know how miracles will come to us. Some are big eye opening wonders, and
others are small occurrences we fail to recognize. Often miraculous surprises
arrive in unexpected ways and we miss them in our lives, or in others, until
years have passed. Then we look back and identify them as the
"wonders" they were.
Melody, our daughter
and her husband were having financial problems. Her husband was losing his
business and things were rough. I didn't know though, how bad their troubles had
actually become. Melody had walked quietly through valleys before in her life. I
had failed to realize the extent of her worries on previous occasions.
Since I lived daily
with the disease Multiple Sclerosis, she didn't want to upset me with her
difficulties, so she had been walking silently through this hardship, alone. I
didn't often know about many of her valleys until she had crawled or walked
through them only to share them with me later.
Her first son was not
quite two when her second son was born. We lived down the street from them, so
it was convenient for me to ride my three-wheel-motorized scooter down the block
to visit. I would often, in the middle of the day, ride down to her house to
hold and spoil my grandbabies. I talked daily with my daughter, yet, I was still
unaware of her extreme difficulties. I knew money was sparse; I didn't know -
there was none.
One day the closet
called to me in that pleading voice, that voice only a woman can understand,
"clean me, clean me," it said. I tried to ignore the pesky annoying
little fellow sitting on my shoulder, but he wouldn't go away. So I started that
dreaded task of pulling out everything in my closet, going through it,
straightening it out, and putting it all back in. I tried to section off the too
little from the too big - then a small portion of the rack remained for
"just the right size." I managed to get it all crammed back in, except
for a jumbo package of baby diapers left over from one of the other
grandchildren.
I picked up the
phone; "Melody, I found a big package of diapers in the closet, could you
use them for Frankie?"
"Yes mom; I'll
be right down to get them!!"
It wasn't until years
later, Melody recanted to me, the miracle of those diapers. She said, "I
had just put the last diaper on Frankie and didn't have any money to buy
more." She remembered what the Bible said about having the faith of a
little child. So, she said, I went to God in prayer.
"Lord that was
my last diaper; I don't have money to buy any more. Please send me some diapers
for my baby."
She in her childlike
faith expected to open her front door and find some diapers sitting on her front
porch.
But, years later when
she told me the story, she said, "But the phone rang, mom, and it was
you."
Had I known the
extent of her hardships, of course I would have bought her the needed diapers,
and she knew that. She didn't want to worry me though, as she knew I had my own
valleys and hardships. Though I always told my children I did not want them to
shield me from the stresses of life, just because of my physical problems; she
still held back her worries from me.
God often uses our
hardships and valleys to show us He is still performing miracles upon this earth
everyday. He used that one miracle to show her how her faith in Him is rewarded;
He used it again, years later, when she told me, about the diaper miracle. He is
using it still again today, as I tell you.
Betty
King
That little voice we hear,
the one that says clean the closet, call a friend, write a special note to a
co-worker, give five bucks to that homeless person, bring food to a neighbor.
Most of the time, we never know why these thoughts come to mind and we don’t
know the effects of our actions if we allow ourselves to be guided by these
intuitions. But, just maybe there
is more to it than we can imagine…just maybe.
No
matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the
photographer It has chosen. Minor
White
God's
Shining Grace
As I often do, when I'm writing a review, I close my office door. It's
a sign to the outside world to leave me alone deep thought in progress.
At these times I also turn off my police scanner so I don’t’ have any
distractions.
This review might be a little harder than
some I thought as I reflected on the
film I saw at a special screening The Passion of the Christ. My
concern was validated as I struggled behind my closed door for hours trying to
share my thoughts on Mel Gibson's interpretation of the death of Jesus Christ.
Though it took hours, I was finally able transfer to my thoughts to
paper, I was finally in a writing groove. Breaking the silence and my new found
concentration was our office intercom. My name was being called.
"Steve? Steve, are you listening to your scanner?" called
Charlyn Finn, my news editor.
"No, I'm not! I turned it off to write my review of The
Passion." I replied curtly, with a hint of irritation.
Charlyn explained that just minutes earlier there had been a car crash on
the causeway bridge and at least one person was thought to be dead and others
injured. The bridge was being closed and emergency responders, along with
two of our staffers, were headed to the scene.
The causeway was a mere mile or two from my office and as I hung up the phone I could hear the sirens of ambulances and fire trucks outside my office racing to the scene. I turned my scanner back on and the sounds of the world immediately rushed back into my quiet office. As we got busy listening to the scanner and trying to understand what had taken place, we learned that our reporters could not get close to the scene. At the moment no one was being allowed anywhere close. There was a lot of confusion and the scene was being treated as a crime scene one of the drivers was apparently intoxicated.
A few minutes later my phone rang.
"I don't want to give you my name but I was a car or two behind the wreck. I saw what happened. I even took a few pictures. Are you interested in a story?" Said a shaky and anonymous young male voice almost out of breath.
"Yeah,
I'm interested, none of my people can get close, what happened?"
He said it appeared a drunk driver had crashed his Honda Accord into a
Jeep Cherokee full of elderly people. One lady was laying on the street
"hurt real bad." He said another lady was "floating in the
bay" and not moving. He wanted to give us the pictures but he was afraid he
might get into trouble.
I assured the young man that he couldn't get in trouble taking pictures
in a public place and that we would use great discretion in anything that we
printed in the newspaper. He agreed to stop by our office when he was able to
get off the bridge. I hung up the phone with a mix of emotion. In mere minutes
my mind has gone from The Passion of Christ, an event two thousand years ago to
a real life passion just a mile from me. I buried my head in my hands and
wondered why?
An hour later, as promised, a young man appeared
at the office. He said his name was Chris and he handed me a little digital
camera he bought just a few days before. My staff quickly went to work
downloading his pictures.
As we scrolled through the pictures on the screen one by one, Chris recounted
the events. "The accident was right in front of me, if I had been a few
seconds earlier I might have been involved in it," Chris told us. "I
saw this guy who was walking towards me, stumbling and looking totally out of
it," He said pointing to the picture on the computer. "He fell
down and I got out of my car to see if he was hurt but a police officer got to
him before I did."
"I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as I walked and took pictures," Chris told us. "At one point, that sheriff deputy there," pointing to a strong and serious looking uniformed man in a picture, "took my camera. He told me I shouldn't be taking pictures. He gave it back to me as he was called to the bridge railing, where the woman had be thrown into the bay."
"With camera in hand, I followed," Chris told us. Then the
tragic picture of a women floating in the bay appeared on the screen. We all
gasp. In the next picture two men were standing by the railing looking down at
the woman's body in the bay. We later found out it was her husband and the
sheriff deputy was attempting to console him. We scrolled to the next
picture. It was virtually the same, two men looking at the tragic scene in the
bay. The next picture was the same shot too. Chris commented that he took
several pictures from this location.
As we looked at picture after picture of this tragic scene, one frame
popped up on the computer and we all froze. We couldn't believe our eyes. It was
the same picture, two men looking over the rail at the woman's body in the
bay. But in this picture, there was an unmistakable and intense beam of light
coming down from the sky and resting over the scene We went back to the
previous picture; the light was not there. We forwarded one frame then the next,
no beam of light. We went back to this picture and starred in amazement. Chris
finally broke the silence, "I didn’t see that when I was taking
these," his voice trailed in disbelief.
We all looked at these frames over and over. We
considered every human possibility for this magnificent beam, asking if it could
have been a reflection from an ambulance or a mirror. No way, it
originated from the sky. We also considered the angle of the sun, looking at the
time of day along with the position of the men in respect to the sun. We
concluded no. It was none of these…it was more.
The next day, my pastor and I were able to meet with the dead woman's
husband the man in the picture. He was the man on the bridge looking down as
his bride of decades floated dead in water before him. His eyes swelled as
he witnessed the beam of light in the photo we shared with him. He said he
remembered telling the deputy that it was his wife floating in the bay and that
he knew she was dead. He hoped she hadn't suffered. I told him I felt the
picture of the beam of light was perhaps meant just for him, to help answer his
question about the tragic death of his wife. We all just sat in silence.
In the end, I published my review of The Passion. Days later we printed an account of the crash on the causeway, the real story, along with the picture. While different, somehow the two events, The Passion and this women's death, seem absolutely inter-connected, one in the same. Whether two thousand years ago on a cross or today on a highway God reaching down with His Shining Grace to save one of His own.
Steven
Bales
Even in the darkest of night…there is light…
©2002-The
Call Project