We had been living in a trailer on three acres in northern Alabama since my discharge from the United States Army less than two years before. My brother and his three children were visiting with us at the time. As a consequence, there were three adults and five children sleeping peacefully that dark February night - completely unaware of the storm that was rapidly approaching them from the west.
Then, just before sunrise, we were wakened by a loud roaring sound. I knew in the same instant that I opened my eyes that a tornado was bearing down upon us. There was no time to flee, and there wasn't any basement or storm cellar to shelter in if there had been. The adults hovered over the children in the hallway, and I quickly asked God to protect them. The prayer had taken seconds - that's all the time we had before it hit.
A window shattered at the other end of the trailer, and the floor beneath us moved. The sounds around us were deafening. It was a horrible combination of freight train, roaring, groaning, creaking, snapping and shredding. And then, there was silence and complete blackness. What had seemed like an eternity to us had only taken seconds in real time, but we had somehow been spared.
Nevertheless, as the sun began to dawn over the horizon, the destruction around us came into sharp focus. The trailer just to the north of us had been obliterated. The house directly across the street had lost its roof. Many of the loblolly pine trees directly behind my trailer, some of them two feet in diameter, had been snapped in half like twigs; and the house on the other side of them had also lost its roof. The power lines and the poles which supported them were down, and a stack of fifteen sheets of 3/4 inch plywood that had been lying in my yard were gone without a trace. It was as if a great hand had reached down out of the sky and held my trailer in place.
The first sound that greeted us when we opened the door to the world outside was someone crying for help. My brother and I eventually traced the cries to the wreckage of my neighbor's trailer and discovered her pinned beneath her car. We helped some of our other neighbors load her onto what had been one of the interior doors of her own trailer a few minutes before and carried her to the back of a pickup truck for the trip to the hospital. A few houses up the street from me, folks were pulling another one of my neighbors out of a mangled tree in what had been his yard.
We learned later that three people had died in the storm and one hundred more had been injured. After evaluating all of the evidence, the experts reported that we had lived through an F3 tornado with winds ranging from 158 to 206 miles per hour.
Some folks said that we were lucky, but I knew that we had experienced a miraculous answer to prayer. Still, I wondered why God had answered my prayers for protection and had apparently not heeded the prayers of others. I knew that I wasn't the most righteous man who had been in the way of that tornado, and that other innocent children had been hurt by it. Why had God chosen to protect us but not them?
And, less than nine years later, one of the children whom God had protected that day in my trailer was killed in an ATV accident. I will never forget that anguished phone call from my brother. His daughter, my beloved niece, was fighting for her life.
I was stunned. How could the same God who had intervened to protect her from that tornado not have intervened in this instance? I had prayed that God would protect those children from hurt and harm a thousand times, but this had happened anyway!
Lauren and her friend had been riding an ATV together that January day when she had topped a gentle rise in the road and crashed head-on into a tree. She was just a few days shy of her fifteenth birthday. She had her whole life before her.
My father and his best friend (a pastor) prayed earnestly together for his granddaughter's recovery. Then, as they finished praying, they remembered the other little girl who had been hurt in the accident. Ashamed that they had forgotten about her, they both sent up a quick petition on her behalf - asking God to also heal her. Even so, that little girl recovered, but Lauren did not.
Why had God heard the prayer that could justly be described as an afterthought for a stranger and had not listened to their earnest pleas for my father's beloved granddaughter? Why had God protected her from that tornado only to let her die a few years later in this horrible accident? Had her survival of the tornado only been a random coincidence after all and not the Divine miracle which I had supposed it to be?
Even more mysteriously, Lauren had had some kind of premonition that she would die young and had expressed her desire that her organs be donated to help others in that event. Hence, at her death, her organs were harvested and helped at least four other individuals to live longer, healthier lives.
Is there some lesson in all of this? Was everything that happened to our family random chance or was their some purpose and design behind it all? Did God intervene in both instances or was it all just the outcome of a random roll of the dice? I don't have all of the answers to these questions, but I still believe that God is out there listening. What do you think?
**The Joppa, Alabama Tornado occurred on Thursday February 16, 1995; and Lauren died on Sunday January 4, 2004.
Then, just before sunrise, we were wakened by a loud roaring sound. I knew in the same instant that I opened my eyes that a tornado was bearing down upon us. There was no time to flee, and there wasn't any basement or storm cellar to shelter in if there had been. The adults hovered over the children in the hallway, and I quickly asked God to protect them. The prayer had taken seconds - that's all the time we had before it hit.
A window shattered at the other end of the trailer, and the floor beneath us moved. The sounds around us were deafening. It was a horrible combination of freight train, roaring, groaning, creaking, snapping and shredding. And then, there was silence and complete blackness. What had seemed like an eternity to us had only taken seconds in real time, but we had somehow been spared.
Nevertheless, as the sun began to dawn over the horizon, the destruction around us came into sharp focus. The trailer just to the north of us had been obliterated. The house directly across the street had lost its roof. Many of the loblolly pine trees directly behind my trailer, some of them two feet in diameter, had been snapped in half like twigs; and the house on the other side of them had also lost its roof. The power lines and the poles which supported them were down, and a stack of fifteen sheets of 3/4 inch plywood that had been lying in my yard were gone without a trace. It was as if a great hand had reached down out of the sky and held my trailer in place.
The first sound that greeted us when we opened the door to the world outside was someone crying for help. My brother and I eventually traced the cries to the wreckage of my neighbor's trailer and discovered her pinned beneath her car. We helped some of our other neighbors load her onto what had been one of the interior doors of her own trailer a few minutes before and carried her to the back of a pickup truck for the trip to the hospital. A few houses up the street from me, folks were pulling another one of my neighbors out of a mangled tree in what had been his yard.
We learned later that three people had died in the storm and one hundred more had been injured. After evaluating all of the evidence, the experts reported that we had lived through an F3 tornado with winds ranging from 158 to 206 miles per hour.
Some folks said that we were lucky, but I knew that we had experienced a miraculous answer to prayer. Still, I wondered why God had answered my prayers for protection and had apparently not heeded the prayers of others. I knew that I wasn't the most righteous man who had been in the way of that tornado, and that other innocent children had been hurt by it. Why had God chosen to protect us but not them?
And, less than nine years later, one of the children whom God had protected that day in my trailer was killed in an ATV accident. I will never forget that anguished phone call from my brother. His daughter, my beloved niece, was fighting for her life.
I was stunned. How could the same God who had intervened to protect her from that tornado not have intervened in this instance? I had prayed that God would protect those children from hurt and harm a thousand times, but this had happened anyway!
Lauren and her friend had been riding an ATV together that January day when she had topped a gentle rise in the road and crashed head-on into a tree. She was just a few days shy of her fifteenth birthday. She had her whole life before her.
My father and his best friend (a pastor) prayed earnestly together for his granddaughter's recovery. Then, as they finished praying, they remembered the other little girl who had been hurt in the accident. Ashamed that they had forgotten about her, they both sent up a quick petition on her behalf - asking God to also heal her. Even so, that little girl recovered, but Lauren did not.
Why had God heard the prayer that could justly be described as an afterthought for a stranger and had not listened to their earnest pleas for my father's beloved granddaughter? Why had God protected her from that tornado only to let her die a few years later in this horrible accident? Had her survival of the tornado only been a random coincidence after all and not the Divine miracle which I had supposed it to be?
Even more mysteriously, Lauren had had some kind of premonition that she would die young and had expressed her desire that her organs be donated to help others in that event. Hence, at her death, her organs were harvested and helped at least four other individuals to live longer, healthier lives.
Is there some lesson in all of this? Was everything that happened to our family random chance or was their some purpose and design behind it all? Did God intervene in both instances or was it all just the outcome of a random roll of the dice? I don't have all of the answers to these questions, but I still believe that God is out there listening. What do you think?
**The Joppa, Alabama Tornado occurred on Thursday February 16, 1995; and Lauren died on Sunday January 4, 2004.
Thanks for sharing your story and thoughts. I do not understand my journey, but I rely on the Spirit to guide me and then I just journey forward. Sometimes it brings pain and sometimes it brings joy to me. I just do the best I can, where I am...
ReplyDeleteI'd like to share some of the comments that were addressed to my private e-mail:
ReplyDelete"I believe "God" (whatever "God" means) hears everything. Whether he or it or they heals or saves somebody from tragedy depends on the person's destiny, we could say. What's in the cards for that person's life? When "God" doesn't intervene doesn't mean he has no heart or compassion. It just means intervention wasn't part of the plan at that moment in time.
I believe whenever a person dies is not really a matter of time and chance, as the COGs like to say. I believe we die right when we're supposed to. Similarly our births are planned out, scheduled so to speak.
I believe in freewill, but I also believe freewill is overrated. There's much more structure to the twists and turns that our lives (and deaths) take than we may have thought and perceived."
And this:
"I'm glad you and your family were spared. Like you, I don't have the answer to why you were spared or to why Lauren died young. And I'm skeptical of those who claim they do. And where do free will and its consequences enter into all of this? Perhaps we have to consider "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" and live each day to the fullest, not knowing what tomorrow may bring."
It’s difficult to make any calls on this that would reflect any degree of accuracy. There is a certain amount of randomness and probability affecting human life. There are also genetic predispositions, environmental factors, experiences, aquaintanceships, education, various exposures, accidents, and infections. I believe there will always be an element of mystery to life, because life is a series of events that are frequently counter-intuitive. There will always be things which happen that it is just not given to us to understand.
ReplyDeleteJohnny Van Zant wrote something into one of his songs that his grandmother used to say: “If you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plans.” I believe there is a degree of truth in that. In the end, it’s not so much what happens in life, but what we do with it and/or about it that defines us.
BB
Thanks for the very thoughtful comments - I think that they will be comforting and instructive to everyone who reads them.
ReplyDeleteI think this is one of the best written things I have seen from you. I was engaged from beginning to end.
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard your dad tell about the ATV accident, I thought he said that the other girl, about whom the other minster and he prayed as an afterthought, was retrospectively discovered to have recovered at the time of their prayer. If that is the case, the event would be a bit more compelling, but it is anyway. You have raised interesting questions. If a high magnitude tornado roars through a community, shredding all in its path, and somehow a trailer that was in its path survives intact when the dwellings around it do not, I have to think that the event was orchestrated ("fire, hail and windstorm fulfilling his word"). It wasn't just your niece who was then spared. You all were. Maybe it wasn't God's priority to spare her, but she was because she was with the rest of you. Or maybe she was the priority, and you guys were along for the ride, and maybe that sparing was on account of what was to happen during the next nine years. We don't know what events depended on her existence in that time. Life is this big complex tapestry God weaves and colors. One day we can stand back and look at the whole picture and understand it. In the meantime, we bow to the potter and accept that he knows what he is making.
Like one of your correspondents, I believe it is appointed for us once to die (Hb 9:27). The word does mean an appointment --- a scheduled time. We all are going to die on time.