Jeremiah 29. 10-14
I want to lay the corners of this message by examining, in brief, 3 passages. Here in Jeremiah we find the “famous” verse, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God tells Israel this as they are in exile, WHERE GOD PUT THEM!
Sometimes we find ourselves in situations ordained of the Lord. Situations to form and fashion us. So, as James tells in his epistle, let us not allow ourselves to be bewildered, or angry. I have a hope. I have a future. I have prosperity (not the name it claim it version, let me be clear)
Psalm 139.
Here I am instructed that I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and that the presence of my Lord is round about me at all times. But I want to focus on verse 16. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
All of life is a gift. Whether “my days” are 90 minutes, or 90 years, it is all a gift of the Lord. And HE knows that number. I will not live one second beyond the time fixed for me.
Psalm 68.20
“Our God is a God who saves; from the Sovereign Lord comes escape from death.”
I agonized over the title for this message. I was torn between “Rescue Me, the 1965 hit by Fontella Bass and the 1967 best seller by the Parliaments, “I Wanna Testify.” Both would be appropriate, but in the end I settled for The Goodness of God.
There’s another song I want to quote from. It’s by Dottie Rambo and it’s called Remind Me, Dear Lord.
“All the things that I love, and hold dear to my heart, they’re just borrowed, they’re not mine at all. Jesus only let me use them to brighten my life, so remind me, remind me, dear Lord. Roll back the curtain of memory now and then. Show me where you’ve brought me from, and where I could have been. Remember I’m human, and tend to forget, so remind me, remind me dear Lord.”
I recently observed an anniversary. No, it isn’t my 70th birthday that recently occurred on September 24. No, it isn’t my spiritual birthday of Sept. 29, 1973. And Gayle and I will (tomorrow, Nov 29) celebrate our 47 years of marriage.
65 years ago. August 3, 1957. I was 7 weeks shy of my 5th birthday. My parents, my younger brother, and I lived in Mt. Airy, NC, near the Virginia border. My mother was going into the hospital for back surgery, so she drove my brother and me to my Grandmother Hix’s house in Moravian Falls, NC, about an hour away. We would stay there until Mom recovered.
Sometime the next morning, my cousin Lana Jon walked over to tell us that she and Great Aunt Carrie had made some pineapple ice cream, in ice cube trays. She wanted to know if “the boys” would like some. So around 12.00 Aunt Matred (Mate) walked us over to Aunt Carrie’s house. It was about 120 yards away. We walked around to the other side of the house to the back porch, where the ice cream was in a chest freezer.
The last thing I remember is seeing Lana and Aunt Mate opening the freezer.
On the floor of this porch were 2 trap doors, with handles. I suppose I had never see anything like this before. They say that curiosity killed the cat? Well, listen to this.
One of the trap doors – I later learned – opened to an abandoned well. DRY. Nothing but a rock bottom.
I opened the other one, and apparently lost my balance, because over and down I went.
Here’s a little of what the newspapers reported. “A hand-dug rock lined well about 3 feet in diameter.” “90 to 110 feet deep.” “Approximately 4 feet of water at the bottom.”
I must have fallen head first. Straight down.
My Aunt Mate started screaming. “Bloody murder” as they say. I was told that she flew outside and screamed.
And her screams did not go unheard.
Her brother, my Uncle Walter Hix, also lived at Grandma’s house at this time. He had a job pumping gas at Great Uncle Grover Hix’s gas station just yards away in the village. He had walked home for lunch and was making a tomato sandwich when he somehow heard the screams. The screams from 120 yards away and from the other side of Aunt Carrie’s house. He put down the Duke’s mayonnaise, and raced through the peanut field and onto the back porch. Without hesitation, he climbed into the well, grasped hold of the galvanized pipe that rand alongside the well which pumped the water into the house, and slid down the well to me.
I had been trapped at the bottom for about 3 minutes.
Someone called the fire department. They showed up with a long rope and hauled me out first, then my Uncle. They put me into another Uncle’s car and raced toward the hospital, passing the ambulance heading in the opposite direction. I stayed there 2 nights.
Apparently I had no concussion. I had a 4 inch scratch on my left shoulder. They treated Uncle Walter for burns on his hands. he was injured worse than me.
I never did get any of that pineapple ice cream.
I think this qualifies as a miracle.
I went back to Grandma’s and was very soon “in her hair” as she used to say. And for many years, about 20, I didn’t think too much about this “miracle.” I was too busy being a teenager. Chasing the next good time.
But soon after September 29, 1973, the curtain of memory rolled back for me and I began to understand how miraculous this experience was.
Why did I not fall side-to side, hitting the jagged edges of the rocks on my way down? How could I have survived hitting the bottom of a well that was at least 90 feet deep? How was it that nothing broke? Certainly I did not land on my head.Why?
How did my Uncle just happen to be home? And how did he hear the screams?
It was a miracle. God rescued me. He saved my life.
Now I really cannot explain to you why I lived. Other than to say that God willed it and that my days He ordained for me had not yet been fulfilled. You know as well as I do, that from a natural perspective, living or dying can seem random. When the towers collapsed, 1000’s died but 1000’s walked away and some of those were side by side. 6 men are in a Vietnamese foxhole when a shell explodes and only one man crawls out alive. I should have died that day.
In early August of this year, Gayle and I were doing more “downsizing” and she asked to to go through some pictures and papers. And I rediscovered these old newspaper clippings from August 1957. And perhaps for the first time I realized something that I had somehow never really thought too much about before. And I felt both shame and revelation at the same time.
And that was the role of my Uncle on that day. His role in my miracle. You see, sometimes God just moves. He just directly heals someone of cancer or restores a broken bone, or delivers someone back form the dead. And don’t we all long to see more of this in our day?
Yes, God moves mountains. But some mountains are not meant to be moved. Some mountains are meant to be climbed. For God never promised that sometimes the cross would not get heavy and the hill would not be hard to climb. He never promised us victory without our fighting. But He did say that help would ALWAYS come in time. He will walk us through the fire. He will pull us from our wells.
And sometimes, sometimes, God needs a human. When he needed an ark built, He had Noah. When He needed a man to be the progenitor of all believers, He had Abraham. When Israel was enslaved in Egyptian bondage for over 400 years, God used Moses. He could have sprung them free “all by Himself”. But He didn’t. The miracle at Jericho saw Rahab the harlot being used of the Lord. And when God needed a virgin woman in the line of David, there was Mary.
My Uncle Walter was a flawed man. A veteran of WW2, he was thrice married. He could not keep a job due to his alcohol addiction. He was known as a public drunk.
But when he was needed, when God needed a man, Uncle Walter did not hesitate and that is what I fully realized recently. Sometimes God needs a man! Sometimes God needs a woman!
He knows we are not perfect. Neither was Gideon, or David, or Peter. And although He wants us to grow into perfection, He wants us willing and available and obedient.
Maybe in the days ahead, you and I could be part of someone’s miracle.
In June 1980, my Uncle lay dying in the VA hospital in Oteen, NC. Alcohol had eaten his liver. I visited him one afternoon and although he never opened his eyes, I believe he could hear me. I held his hand, and began to talk to him. I I asked him to squeeze my hand once for yes and twice for no and I began to converse with him.
I told him I loved him. I told him I was grateful for what he had done for me 23 years earlier. And as I said this, tears rolled out of his closed eyes and he squeezed my hand very hard. Then I told him that I needed to know – did he believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who died and rose again for your sins? He squeezed my hand.
Do you believe, Uncle Walt, that Jesus is your Savior and that He awaits you on the other side? And again he squeezed my hand one time. One time for yes, and he held it there for about 30 seconds.
2 days later he died. And one day I will know whether or not we will be together again.
In this Thanksgiving season, allow God to roll back the curtain. To show you where He’s brought you from and where you could have been. To celebrate all the things He has given us to brighten our lives. Remind us, remind us dear Lord.
Bless the Lord, O my soul And all that is within me, bless His holy name
Bless the Lord O my soul, and forget none of His benefits
Who pardons all our iniquities, Who heals all our diseases
Who redeems our life from the pit (AND the well!) Who crowns us with lovingkindness and compassion
Who satisfies our years with good things so that our youth is renewed like the eagle’s
For behold, from this time forth, all generations will call me blessed.
For the Might One has done great things for me.
And that’s enough for now.