A Miraculas Save!



Google Image/ABC News

A miraculous save!  A mother and her two young children dangled precariously from the freeway bridge near Buellton, California, after a gravel truck hit them and the truck plunged into the creek bed below. Tragically the driver of the truck died, but what happened next is incredible! Santa Barbara firefighters attending the accident knew that what they really needed was a forklift to lift the vehicle from its position teetering on the edge of the bridge- when guess what just happened by? A forklift, with Navy Seabees trained to use it! Today the mother and two children are alive to witness to the miraculous save.

After seeing an incident like this, we find ourselves thinking: someone must really be looking out for their safety! It reminds me of the kind of heavenly father who tells his servant (see Old Testament book of Jonah) how concerned he is about some of his children, and asks Jonah to go tell them of how dangerous a road they are traveling, and they are putting their lives in danger unless they decide to change course. And the people God wants to save are not Jonah’s favorite. In fact, they are enemies!   

This little book may be the fodder for many a simple childhood story about a man swallowed by a whale (actually, a big fish, but you know how we like to embellish!) who is a reluctant messenger for God. But for us adults, we come away from the story with more questions than answers!  How could God ask us to save the enemy? How do we know they are not going turn on us and attack us? The countries had a history of attacks against each other. But still God wants Jonah to help set the people on a path other than the one to destruction.

With all the questions the story gives us, perhaps this is exactly where we need to be in our minds. Asking the right kind of questions- questions like: if God has compassion on even this group of people, why does it surprise us that he wants us to have compassion as well? Questions like this just might make us question all kinds of our assumptions about how we relate to all kinds of people, groups, and nations. It just might make us search our hearts and see if we have the same heart as God, looking for one merciful save after another.

Maybe this is exactly what Jesus had in mind when he said: ‘Ask and it shall be given unto you.’ What we could get in return is a heart like the Father, and a world on a less precarious path. That’s a miraculous save.