Archive for October, 2012

All my life, God has been preparing me to do great things for Him. So, I’ll start at the beginning.

When I was born, I had profound hearing loss. The reason was that my cochleas weren’t fully formed. A normally-hearing adult has cochleas that turn two and a half times, but my left cochlea only went one and a half times and my right cochlea just one turn. Many or most hair cells were probably missing too. I wore hearing aids until I completely lost my hearing around six years of age. December 22, 1998, I got my first cochlear implant, on my left side, at almost 6.5 years of age. About 9.5 years later, it malfunctioned. Thank God it had a 10-year warranty. Also, it was determined that having two cochlear implants was a “medical necessity” because if a battery went dead or something else happened to just one of them, I would still be able to hear. Thus, I got a replacement for my left implant and a new implant on my right side…for free. This and many other things (like unusually-good electrode-array placement and great speech therapists) are all evidence of God’s providence in my life, getting me to where I am now.

That was about three and a half years ago. Last spring, I went to the BASIC conference, which was a conference of many BASIC (Brothers And Sisters In Christ) groups from around the northeast, the country, and even the world. There, I was finally baptized. I had been baptized as a baby, but that was way before I could possibly make the decision to publicly proclaim my death and resurrection in Jesus. Consequently, for a few years prior, I had been feeling that I still needed to be baptized. When I came up out of the water, I had the greatest joy I’d ever had, and it lasted for weeks. (There was also a great amount of relief as I didn’t have that uncertainty anymore.) That was in the afternoon. In the evening, I was also baptized in the Holy Spirit. Immediately after that, I could and did speak, sing, and pray in a tongue.

It didn’t stop there though. About seven days later, I (mentally) heard from God for the first time. Up until that point, I hadn’t ever expected or desired to hear from God, so I never did. God asked/said “you love me”. I replied with “Yes God, I love You.” He then said “Feed my sheep.” I replied, “Yes God, I will feed Your sheep.” A few seconds later, I had a WAIT-A-MINUTE! moment when I realized that we had recreated the first part of Jesus’ conversation with Peter. I had a second WAIT-A-MINUTE! moment while brushing my teeth a couple minutes later when I remembered that a very good friend of mine had compared me to Peter on account of my rock-iness. Either that Wednesday or that Sunday, another good friend – who later became a mentor – told me after church that God had told him that He wanted me to lead a small group based on the series that was going to happen at church (based on The Me I Want to Be, by John Ortberg). I was actually surprised at this given that up to this point, I had been content to follow and rarely ever stepped up as a leader. I told him I would pray and ask God about it.

That night, God reminded me of our exchange earlier. I quickly made the connection between leading the small group and feeding His sheep. With that, I told said friend and because of God’s providence, I got the last of their small group study materials. The next five weeks, I lead the small group (which consisted of 1 to 10 [depending on the week] of my fellow BASIC friends) and it went pretty well. That summer (summer of 2012), I was inspired to start and lead a five-week small group based on A. W. Tozer’s book The Pursuit of God. From that, I learned quite a bit as I was producing all of the material (aside from the book) myself in addition to organizing and leading. Before the first small group (The Me I Want to Be), I actually didn’t know that I could be a good leader. So, God used these two experiences to show me that I could indeed lead and lead well.

At the time of writing, I am the treasurer/secretary for my BASIC group here at RIT, one of the three leadership positions. Here, I’m learning valuable skills when it comes to management and organization, which are important for a good leader to have. Also, I learned a couple weeks ago that I am leading by example. That is, when I share mini-testimonies or when I dance/sing/sign (sometimes all three at the same time) during worship, I am setting an example. The way I live is an example of what a life on fire for God looks like.

All this so far has been preparation. Remember what I said at the beginning about my deafness? One of the colleges of RIT is NTID – the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. About 1 out of every 8 students here at RIT is deaf or hard-of-hearing. The only other college with such a high concentration is Gallaudet, which was set up specifically as a college for Deaf students. Anyway, because I am deaf (and becoming more Deaf) while at the same time being able to hear almost as well as a normally-hearing human, I am able to act as a bridge between the Deaf and Hearing communities. I can reach out to both sides and I have good friends on both sides.

In addition, last spring, I prayed to God that He would let me be at the forefront of the revival that is coming to RIT. I look back on that now and see that God basically went “Okay then”, and set to work transforming me from a supremely prideful person who would do damage in the long run to one that could honestly listen to God and lead a revival. Consequently, I had a number of little but significant mental and emotional tweaks. For instance, the idea that leaders serve. Jesus exemplifies this beautifully in John 13:1-17, where He washes His disciples’ feet because He has all authority. True leaders serve the ones they’re “leading”. So, I will serve the people of RIT, and I am proud to serve them.

This time here at RIT is preparation too. If anything, the next two and a half years will be even more preparation than I’ve had in the past twenty. After I graduate, I know my role will be connected to the state of New York and the revival that will be exploding by then. Beyond that, I don’t know anything except that I will go wherever God calls me and I will serve all those that God would have me serve. No matter what my level of leadership, God is and will always be my leader.

A long path of preparation indeed, from birth to the present and into the future. The preparation will not stop until I am face-to-face with Jesus in the flesh, and perhaps not even then.

Scene 3: On a Mission

It wasn’t just my bad experiences that soured me on church. The whole premise of Christianity was starting to bother me, especially in the way it was portrayed by its most vocal practitioners.

On one side were fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, preaching an amalgamation of legalistic theology and free-market capitalism. On the other side were groups like the Jesus Seminar, scholars who spent their time debating which of the words of Jesus were actually spoken by Jesus. Then there was Bishop John Shelby Spong, who advocated something he called non-theistic Christianity.

If I could point to one thing that bothered me about all these versions of Christianity, it was that they all seemed to agree that the most important element of the Christian faith was to talk about Christianity. I had a need for a faith that was more than just talk.

I remembered reading in the gospels how Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, lifted up the lowly and humbled the proud, and I wanted to find Christians who lived like that. Due to my previous experiences I doubted I would ever find that type of faith community. But in the spring of 1994, the thought entered my head that I should join a church and go serve in a foreign country. At first I dismissed it as unrealistic, but the more I tried to ignore it the more persistent the thought became.

So I made myself start visiting churches again. This time I limited myself to mainline denominations, in the hope of avoiding the authoritarian traps I had previously fallen into.

In August I visited East Heights United Methodist Church. One of the things I would grow to love about East Heights was that every week before taking the offering, they highlighted one of their ministries that the offering helps fund. The first week I visited the ministry focus was the annual February mission trip to Costa Rica. The pastor added that there was still time to sign up for the trip. I knew instantly that this was the church I was looking for.

The only problem was the cost. United Methodist missionaries are expected to pay their own way, and I would need $800 to cover my expenses. My night job covered my rent and bills, but I didn’t know if I could spare $800. So I told God, with less humility than the situation probably called for, that if he would provide the funds I would go.

That night my boss called me into his office and said that he appreciated my work, and he gave me a 75 cent per hour raise. I mentally calculated 75 cents times 40 hours times the 27 weeks remaining until the trip: $810. Despite the fact that my take-home pay would be less than that after taxes, I managed to save enough for the trip.

When February came I went with the team to Ciudad Quesada, Costa Rica, to help build an additional wing to a rural hospital. The locals, despite their poverty, displayed a strong faith and a trust that God would take care of them through hardships. Back in the U.S., a lot of people I knew worried constantly about whether their paychecks would cover their credit card bills.

In Costa Rica I saw the type of faith community that I wanted Christianity to be. I flirted with the idea of dropping everything and moving to Central America, but in the end I didn’t have the nerve.

I would later make two more short-term mission trips to Latin America. I’d like to believe that I did some good, but the truth is that I got far more out of the experiences than I could ever have given.

Scene 4: Faith in Crisis

On my return home from Costa Rica I was still uncomfortable with most of what I saw in American Christianity, but at East Heights I at least found a refuge from the extremes.

But about that time, my faith took a hit from a completely different direction. The recently repaired Hubble Space Telescope was producing incredibly detailed photos of the far reaches of the galaxy. At the same time, astronomers discovered the first clear evidence of planets outside our solar system. It was an exciting time for astronomy, and my old love of the night sky led me to seek as much information as I could about the origins of the universe. I saw how the Big Bang made more sense than any other explanation.

And that wasn’t all. New fossil discoveries in Africa, combined with the human genome project, gave scientists an ever-increasing understanding of our relation to extinct hominid species, and the more they learned the muddier the picture became. For the first time, I grasped the role of evolution in how we got to where we are.

This new knowledge appealed to the rational side of me, but I couldn’t see a way to reconcile it with the spiritual side of me. The more I learned about scientific discoveries and the scientific process, the more uncomfortable I felt professing a faith rooted in miracles–even though I’d experienced miracles in my own life.

I mentioned these struggles in a BBS forum where I was active, and received a reply from someone by the handle of Shaolin, who opined that this was a weakness of Western religion. He suggested I look into Taoism as an alternative.

I was so confused about my faith that I was willing to give it a try. I bought a copy of the Tao Te Ching and started reading. From the very first words, this book challenged and confronted my rational side.

The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the true name.

In Western society it is comforting to have an explanation for everything. Life, however, is messy and doesn’t always lend itself to answers. No matter how well we think we understand this world, some things remain beyond our grasp. This theme of not being able to grasp the ultimate is repeated throughout the Tao Te Ching.

The Taoist concept of wei-wu-wei (literally “action without action”, meaning something along the lines of going with the flow of the way things ought to be rather than trying to bend things to our desires) also struck a chord with me.

When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering.

Christian faith is like this as well. We will never accomplish God’s will by interfering and doing things our own way. Only by yielding to God can we accomplish anything. The more I read of Taoism, the more I realized it had nothing for me that I couldn’t already find in Christianity.

Look, it cannot be seen–it is beyond form. Listen, it cannot be heard–it is beyond sound. Grasp, it cannot be held–it is intangible. These three are indefinable; Therefore they are joined in one.

I never expected to see support for the Trinity in the Tao Te Ching. Granted, this passage is talking about something else. Yet the doctrine of the Trinity does indeed hold that three are joined in one, and that ultimately they are beyond our ability to define. The Tao Te Ching had given me a way of viewing the world without the need to rationalize everything. And with that in place, I was finally ready to accept Christianity on its own terms.

I still struggle with questions most people will never ask, and I still have problems with authoritarians. I’ve still got a long road ahead of me, but I trust that God knows better than I do. And at this stage of the journey, that’s all I need.

Scene 1: The Night I Met God

To say I was not one of the popular kids would be a major understatement. I was a typical 1980s-era nerd, a loner who spent much of my free time learning how to get the most out of my TRS-80 microcomputer or exploring the night skies with my telescope. Living in a sports-crazed rural community but lacking athletic ability, the closest I could get to fitting in was competing on the cross country team.

The fall of 1985, my junior year of high school, I could see things starting to turn around. My running had improved enough that I was occasionally getting medals, and people were starting to see me as less of a nerd, and more of an athlete. In October I managed to get a date to the homecoming dance, and afterwards somehow found myself in my first relationship. But by early November, both the relationship and the cross country season had ended; by Thanksgiving weekend I was alone again, and this time I didn’t enjoy it.

On Sunday night of Thanksgiving weekend, I was sitting in my room reading The Scarlet Letter for my English class when I started to feel dizzy and short of breath. My best guess is it was an allergic reaction. I’ve had severe allergies most of my life, but this was the strongest reaction I’ve ever had.

I don’t remember the next few minutes. The next thing I recall, I was on the other side of the room, lying in my bed, breathing slowly to catch my breath. In my confused state I remember thinking, my life is worthless, and I whispered a prayer, “God, if you can hear me, just let me die.”

What happened instead is hard to explain. I slowly became aware of a presence in my room. I couldn’t see anyone, but I had a sense of being watched. The intensity of this presence began to grow, until it was so overwhelming that I was aware of nothing else. The bed, the room, even my own self seemed to be swallowed up by the intensity of–whatever it was.

Years later I was struck by a scene from C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Lewis, imagining a bus trip to heaven, says:

At first, of course my attention was caught by my fellow passengers, who were still grouped about in the neighborhood of the omnibus, though beginning, some of them, to walk forward into the landscape with hesitating steps. I gasped when I saw them. Now that they were in the light, they were transparent–fully transparent when they stood between me and it, smudgy and imperfectly opaque when they stood in the shadow of some tree. They were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air. One could attend to them or ignore them at will as you do with the dirt on a window pane. I noticed that the grass did not bend under their feet: even the dew drops were not disturbed. Then some re-adjustment of the mind or some focussing of my eyes took place, and I saw the whole phenomenon the other way round. The men were as they always had been; as all the men I had known had been perhaps. It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison.

The presence I experienced in my room that night was like what Lewis described–so intense that all the ordinary things of life paled by comparison. But at the time, the only way I could describe it was that I was in the presence of God.

A few days later an acquaintance stopped me in the hallway at school and said, “I was reading the Bible last night, and God told me to share this message with you: ‘From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.’” I asked him what that was supposed to mean, and he said he didn’t know, just that God wanted him to deliver that message to me.

I’ve spent many years trying to figure out what it means.

Scene 2: Problems with Authority

In college I fell in with the Pentecostal crowd. I started attending the Church of the Foursquare Gospel with some friends. The way they spoke about God, as someone who was palpably present in the world, seemed to match my own experience. But I soon ran into difficulties. First was their insistence that the gift of speaking in tongues was intended for every Christian. My own experience suggested otherwise. Second was a pervasive paranoia, an us-against-the-world attitude that left them distrustful of everyone outside their circle.

In my sophomore year, the associate pastor led a college Bible study centered around Edgar Whisenant’s “88 Reasons Why The Rapture will be in 1988”. When I raised some doubts one week in the Bible study, the pastor spoke to me afterward, asked me if I was harboring some secret sin, and accused me of being arrogant and having a problem with authority. I knew something wasn’t right, but at the time I wasn’t sure if the problem was with me or them.

I prayed about this, but didn’t get an answer from God one way or the other.

After a number of talks with my friends, they concluded the problem was that I had done my baptism all wrong. My parents had had me baptized as an infant; it wasn’t a choice I had made myself. So we talked to the pastor about getting me rebaptized, and I was scheduled to get dunked a few weeks later at a Wednesday night service.

I was one of three people getting baptized that night. My friends sat in the front row to support me. But I still wasn’t fully convinced that this was the answer to the questions that were bothering me. I was beginning to suspect that my “problem with authority” was a warning sign that something wasn’t right with this church.

Finally my time came to go under the water, and when I did I heard God’s voice as clearly as if he was standing between me and the pastor. In the brief moment before I came up again, God told me, “Get away from here. These people are hindering your spiritual growth.”

My friends told me that when I came up out of the water I had a look of peace like no one they had seen before. If they had known the reason for that peace, they might not have been so quick to congratulate me.

I tried a number of other churches during the rest of my college years, but never committed to another one. I didn’t want a repeat of that experience.

After college I enrolled in graduate school at Wichita State University. To pay the bills I took a night job in a warehouse. I kept busy enough between school and work that I convinced myself I didn’t have time for church.

But one day on campus I happened to run into a friend from college who was also now at WSU. She told me about a great church she had found, and she invited me to attend. I was reluctant but I agreed to give it a shot. The next Sunday morning found me in downtown Wichita in the Century II Convention Hall, worshipping with the Church of Christ Jesus. After the service I was introduced to some guy that told me he would become my mentor. Something about this struck me as not right. Nevertheless I ageed to meet with him a few times, but it soon became clear that we had irreconcilable differences. I still had a problem with authority–or more accurately, with authoritarianism. Within less than a month I left that church and never looked back.

Through it all I somehow maintained my trust in God, but I was through with church. Or so I thought.

Way back when I was just a little bitty boy living in a box under the stairs in the corner of the basement // of the house half a block down the street from Jerry’s Bait shop // You know the place // well anyway, back then life was going swell and everything was just peachy {ref}

When I was a kid (and even occasionally still), I’d hear the stories of people saved from lives of crime, debauchery, hedonism, sex, drugs, etc – and want to be like them. I wanted to have that really cool story that everybody hears and says, “wow” to.

What I realized as a late teen, though, was that I had that story – I just hadn’t realized it for years. In looking back, I am happy God didn’t let me have that story – because He gave me one of my own.

31 years ago I was born into a Christian family, and cannot recall a time when we did not attend church on a very regular basis (3 times on Sunday and once Wednesday – plus special services, of course). I liken my raising to being born into a seminary – sermons were theologically deep, Sunday School (even for fairly young kids) was dense, and we learned a LOT. But a little too often it was just the theology and not much in the way of practical application – at least…not for non-Christians.

The church I grew up in took the view that since the church is the body of believers, it’s not hyper important to reach the lost – in church; reach the lost in special services, outreaches, personally, etc – but church is not “where you get saved”…normally. Whether or not this is a good outlook, I won’t comment further now – it’s just my observation.

From as far back as I can recall, I knew about God’s plan of salvation through His perfect Son, Jesus Christ. I knew John chapter 14, verse 6 -­ that Jesus was THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life. I knew what He said in Matthew 18:11: “For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.” I talked with my friends about it sometimes. I knew there were consequences for sin, both in this life and the next. I knew what Paul wrote to the Roman church when he said, “all have fallen short of the glory of God”.

For better than 16 years, I KNEW what God expected, and what He offered. I could “walk the walk” and “talk the talk” about redemption, the salvific efficacy and forensic value of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection, go in depth on justification by faith, etc. I knew the “five points of Calvinism” (total depravity of man, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance/preservation of the saints).

It was a rare sermon or Bible study that I would hear that I didn’t (at least mentally) yawn through; I’d heard it before, knew what the preacher was going to say, and didn’t care.

All that “redemption”, “conversion”, and “salvation” stuff was great – for somebody else. I’d get around to it eventually – or not; I didn’t care, not really. As long as I was a good kid, didn’t get into trouble, and paid attention at church, who would know other than me that what I “knew” was NOT what I “believed”?

Fortunately, it’s not all up to me – the two best words in all the Bible came true for me: “but God”. “But God” appears in the NASB 44 times. Some of them are good, and some are bad. The first is good, “But God remembered Noah .. and the water subsided.” [Genesis 8:1]. The record in Numbers 22:22 is not so good, “But God was angry because he was going, and the angel of the LORD took his stand in the way as an adversary against him”.

What I realized as I was getting ready to graduate high school was that God was not happy with me. Indeed, He was angry.

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy Constitution, and your own Care and Prudence, and best Contrivance, and all your Righteousness, would have no more Influence to uphold you and keep you out of Hell, than a Spider’s Web would have to stop a falling Rock {ref}

There I was, standing at the brink of adulthood, and on the cusp of the precipice of Hell. All at once, I knew I needed to be rescued from His wrath – and that He had provided that rescue in the form of His Son, Jesus.

I heard a pastor use an analogy once that I loved: in the mountains, it is very obvious when dawn breaks – all at once the side of the mountain is no longer in shadow, but is in full light. In the prairie, though, dawn “starts” a long time before it is “daylight” – and finding when the precise moment of daybreak occurring is not easy. However, once it is fully day, it is just as bright in both places.

That was me; almost no one other than myself knew that I was ‘finally’ a Christian – most people who knew me thought I had been for a long time. After all, I was a good kid, didn’t get into too much trouble, and generally behaved. They thought they had seen the light a long time before it was really there. I knew that the Son was finally in my life – but cannot give the time and date for His arrival.

Even now, where I am nearing having spent more time in life as a Christian than not, I only know that God intervened, plucking me from my path leading to His angel of death and an eternity engulfed in His wrath and instead enabled me to enter the narrow gate that will ultimately lead to life eternal.

Praise God: He deigned to intervene and rescue me!

Our sermon this past week was about Joshua and Israel. It’s a triumphant moment, but it had to be one that Joshua met with at least a small amount of trepidation. The scene is an interesting one. All of Israel (The Bible lists 40,000 fighting men, so figure at least 3-4 times that total) is arrayed on one bank of the Jordan, with the promised land on the other side. However, the Jordan is at flood stage; it’s overflowed its banks. A risky crossing or waiting until the river recedes appear to be the only options.

However, God has a different plan. He tells Joshua to have the priests take the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan. When the priests set foot in the river the rushing waters of the river are held and Israel crosses the river on dry land.

My Jordan wasn’t a river, but I find the metaphor apt. This is the story of being on the banks of the river and having the waters recede as we move forward. This is the story of something hard, that could have drowned us, but did not because of grace and God’s providence.

It started in the spring of 2010. My wife and I had just become pregnant with our second child. Although Mrs. Eagle had a bit of a bad feeling about the pregnancy everything seemed normal and we had begun thinking about what life would be like with our new arrival. We were anticipating but not really buying much in anticipation. We knew that the 20 week anatomy scan would be the time when things really started to get going, we could start working on the nursery etc. Only something happened.

At about 18 weeks we went in for our anatomy scan. It was clear from the beginning that things weren’t quite right. The tech began doing some tests and measurements we hadn’t seen before and the resolution on the scan wasn’t very good. There was not enough fluid in Mrs. Eagle’s uterus. Something had gone wrong.

We came back two weeks later and nothing had changed. The baby still did not have enough fluid. The banks of our Jordan were rising. The doctor mentioned Potter’s Syndrome (bilateral renal agenesis if you like big medical terms) and said that it was still early enough to abort if that was what we wanted to consider.

A specialist confirmed the doctor’s diagnosis. Our baby did not have kidneys and this would lead to low to no lung development. While in the womb our baby was fine, but when she was born she would be unable to breathe.

Our Jordan river had hit flood stage. This was devastating (although not unexpected) news. Many around us prayed for a miracle, for our baby to be healed. This was something that we hoped for, prayed for even, but to us the medical evidence was clear. Yes God could do it, but that did not mean he would and the blind confidence of some was not something that we could let ourselves embrace. Instead we asked for the strength to deal with the path that lay ahead of us. If he chose to heal our little one Praise Be To God. If he did not, then Praise Be To God.

The next several months were very difficult. Mrs. Eagle became more and more pregnant as the baby grew, but every few weeks we had a doctor’s visit or specialist visit and each of these just served as a reminder of what was coming.

Finally the due date approached. This was going to be a new and different experience, a different hospital from where we had our first baby, somewhere completely unfamiliar.

Out of the blue Mrs. Eagle gets a phone call, its a coordinator at the local hospital where we are planning to deliver, she sets up meetings for us with the hospital’s grief counselor, a neonatologist and gives us a tour of the maternity wing. She even briefs the medical staff at the hospital to let them know who we are and what our situation is. She apologizes that we had slipped through the cracks but mentions that she had gotten an email from another nurse at the hospital apprising her of our situation (we still don’t know who).

In a lot of ways that phone call was the beginning of our Jordan parting. Mrs. Eagle went into labor just three days later. Her labor was much easier than with our first child. At our meeting with the neonatologist we had discussed and made the decision not to attempt any life saving care for our little one (it would have been futile anyways) so we were able to spend her entire life holding and loving her. She lived for about an hour unable to breathe, but very precious.

The hospital had a photographer from an organization called Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep come in and take pictures of our little one with all of us (myself, Mrs. Eagle, and our son). These photos, while hard to look at are very much cherished by both myself and Mrs. Eagle.

The next morning our doctor came in and something he said helped us realize just how gracious God had been to us. Our little girl looked perfect physically; she had all her fingers, all her toes, no exterior deformities. Had she been born before routine sonograms we would have been completely unaware of anything wrong until she was born and would not breathe. Our Jordan had been parted. Little did we know that this parting had taken place before the waters had even begun to rise.

Almost two years later we’ve gained some perspective. The ~20 weeks that we were able to prepare for and mourn for our child made the aftermath of her death significantly easier (although still very hard). The hour that we were able to spend with her alive was and will always be one of the most cherished hours of my life. I will always be most thankful for the person who emailed the hospital coordinator and told her about us.

I was sitting in church this past week, to some degree wondering what I’d say in this post. How I could tell you about one of the most tragic, miraculous, and beautiful things that had ever happened to me and how God worked to show himself in a bad situation, even when he did not choose to heal the afflicted?

Miracles aren’t about healing the sick, giving sight to the blind or hearing to the deaf. They are about showing God’s power. I believe he did that in this situation. He showed himself to my wife and I, not by healing our daughter, but by putting the right people in our path, preventing the devastation of a sudden loss, and by giving us even just an hour with our beautiful baby girl.