Quick thinking, or a miracle?? We'll take it....

My cousin Raymond is like a son to dad, and they spend tons of time together.  Raymond is a master mechanic, and tinkering with dad is a treat for both of them.  Last weekend their project was to replace the brakes on dad’s dozer.  I’m not sure how long they’d been working on it, but mom had told stories of Saturdays spent tearing down, looking for parts, basically getting nothing done, but the two of them having a good time.  They had taken side and front panels off the dozer, removed the seat, taken the brakes apart, stripped almost everything off of it.  They had removed the gas tank and had it hanging up in the air with a come-along, and dad was using it for a seat. 

They get the brake part on and want to test it out before putting everything back if they can, so they try to manipulate the place where the levers should be and put the dozer in gear to move forward.  Oops, wrong lever slot – it starts going backwards, right towards a truck worth about $100,000.  Dad is sitting on the come-along swinging gas tank, and he can’t reach forward far enough to try to get the lever into the right slot, and his were tangled in all the other parts and he couldn’t get them loose.  Right about panic time, somehow dad reaches the brake with his foot and it works!  They could have both been run over, or dad flung off the gas tank, the truck destroyed, you name it. 

When dad is telling the story, he’s talking about how where he was on the gas tank, he knew he couldn’t reach this or do that, but his mind is racing through all the possibilities of how to stop this train they’ve put into motion.   Praise God his mind works!   How many almost-80-year-olds can take a dozer apart and put it back together to start with? 

One of my favorite songs we sing at church talks about taking back what the devil has stolen, and when I think of this past year, how dad has been restored, I just praise Him!  There are so many areas in our life that the devil has stolen - the drugs in this community that have stolen the future of young people, the health of so many, the marriages that have been destroyed and wrecked through selfishness, sinfulness, neglect, the depression that has taken over our state and country. I could go on and on.  If we did not have the Lord, where would come our hope?  I think the moral of today’s story is that our lives are purposeful – God has a plan for our lives, for all of us!  Dad was so close to death’s door, and he was spared, once again – and why?  Because God still had work for him to do!  

​Just a couple months ago, the church my parents attended in Florida closed down, and they gave ALL their possessions (chairs, hymnals, Sunday School literature, toilet paper, coffee pot, literally everything) to our new church here.  Mom and dad drove to Florida and brought back a U-Haul full of things that we were desperate for, as we hope to close on the Around the Farm property this week, and we had nothing to put in it, not even the first chair.  Nearly 80 years old and still being used of God……oh, how I want that to be my life, to not have wasted a single minute of it, but to know that God has me here for a purpose and He needs me to get to work!