Miracle Maker

I am continuing my personal story of how the hand of God has shaped and repaired my life from the results left over from losing my mother at the age of four.

In "Out of the Fog" ... I spoke of the tragic life history of my mother.  Now I want to share the story of another woman God used to affect my life in a positive way.

One year before the birth of my mother, another baby girl was born in a small town in west central Illinois.  She would grow up attending what was then called "brush arbor meetings" held by traveling preachers.  As a teenager her heart's desire turned to the things of God.

Feeling as though she was called to the ministry, she decided to attend Bible College.  As a young single woman with her new seminary degree she helped pastor two or three small churches in Arizona and New Mexico for a while.  

But all was not good.  As with my birth mother, a serious event in her life would bring on much distress and concern.  Within a few years she found out that she had ovarian cancer.  If I understood the story from her own lips ... this young woman had a complete hysterectomy and the removal of her reproductive organs ... meaning she would never give birth to her own children.  She told me, this became one of her main concerns thinking, what man would want her now?

Life isn't fair is it.  But she resolved within her heart to still live for her Lord even without children.  But God wasn't through with her either.  God had plans for this special young woman.  Unknown to either of us ... a four year old motherless boy, and this barren, childless Christian woman were going to cross paths.

As a four year old boy,  I had absolutely no defense against the fear inflicted upon my young heart and mind after the death of my mother.  Daytime wasn't a problem ... it was in the dark ... at night, after I was asleep.  I was tormented by dreams of evil creatures climbing up into my bed trying to pull me down into hell from which they came.

I didn't learn until much later, years in fact, that my young soul was being attacked by demonic spirits trying to make me believe I had no choice, that I was ... destined for Hell.  My mother was gone and she was never coming back.  I would never see her again; I would never hear her warm comforting voice when I was afraid, or hear her laugh again or call my name. 

With my mother's death, I was left in a vulnerable position not only for emotional distress, but I was also open for spiritual attacks from Satan.  What I saw and felt was just as real as my mother's death.  I found out just how real the spirit world is.  It's real, and it can be terrifying to a small child.

You have heard the phrase ... "God works in mysterious ways."  Well, I'm not disagreeing with that, but what God can work out is to move and arrange things so that His will for you is accomplished.  God can fix problems that happen in life. 

I had a problem.  My two brothers had the same problem.  We were three boys without a mother.  Our father had a problem.  What was he to do by himself with three young boys?  So what does God do?  He arranges for our father to meet this special Christian lady I have been speaking of.  The one who had cancer.  The one who could not give birth to her own children. 

Within six months or so, dad had a new loving wife and we had a new mother.  To be open and honest with you ... I didn't want her.  I was four years old and I didn't know this new person.  I wanted my real mom ... but that was not going to happen.

So for the next sixteen years she raised me, teaching me about Jesus.  I left home armed with the truth of the Word of God that she had taught and lived out in front of me.

Now here is where it gets interesting.

My new mother, years later confided in me that she used to worry about never having children to love and raise as a family.  Then she said ... "But God took care of that when your father asked me to marry him and do what he could not do ... be a mother to his boys.  I had a ready made family."

Isn't God good.

Life goes on, and the years go by quickly.  Forty years or so later, this loving mother is again confronted with cancer.  She is now around seventy years old.  Colon cancer ... but operable.  It is removed and tested ... it's ovarian cancer.  What?  How is that possible?  Her ovaries were removed fifty years before.

Her cancer doctor wanted to publish an article in a national medical journal about how some of her ... previous ovarian cancer cells ... attached themselves to her abdominal wall and laid there dormant for fifty years.  But mom said no to his request.

I did not know until the colon cancer, that she never agreed with either of the two cancer diagnosis given to her.  She refused to ever say that she had cancer.  She just wouldn't say it.  She denied she had cancer to her dying day.     

Now do you see why I said ... God wasn't through with her yet.  God had plans for her.  Cancer doesn't worry God one bit.  Yes ... He allowed it to form.  But He can also speak to cancer and it will lay dormant until He says otherwise.  And so it did.

As in my last post, "Out of the Fog," this scripture is fitting: Ecclesiastes 3:1 ... "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."
 
God's purpose for this woman was ... to live and raise as her own ... three boys, one of whom was me.

God made a way. 

He is the ... "Miracle Maker" ... you know.

Blessings ...


         

Out of the Fog

It was a very dark rainy night out in the Indiana countryside when a midnight fog rolled in.  A family of four was heading home to a small farm town in central Illinois.  In the front seat driving was a father with his eight year old daughter at his side.  Mom rode in the back seat with her five year old son stretched out asleep with his head in her lap.

Back in 1923, country roads didn't have any night time railroad warning signs to alert drivers of the danger of oncoming trains approaching the roadway.  On this night, with the lack of visibility due in part to the fogged up automobile's window glass from the rain, and with the addition of the dense fog further hindering night vision ... tragedy happened.

Call it bad luck, an accident that just happened, or driver negligence ... it was bad.  The train always wins in this kind of contest.  As the vehicle crossed the railroad tracks, out of the fog, the big steam locomotive hit the back half the the car on the drivers side crushing the two passengers in the rear seat killing them instantly.  One was a loving wife and mother, the other a son and brother, taken from this world way too soon.

Death has no respect for love, age or relationship.

With no time to react to the brute inescapable crushing power of the train dragging the car down the tracks, the driver instinctually grabs for his little girl who is now being thrown out of the right hand door head first.  But before he can pull her back to the relative safety of the front seat with him, her head is dragging along the side of the tracks opening up her scalp and skull, filling her cranium with cinders from the roadbed.

After some time, help does arrive and the father and his little girl end up at the nearest hospital.  Dad is given first aid for his minor injuries, but he is told his beautiful little eight year old daughter won't live through the night.  So she gets no care whatsoever.  No first aid, nothing.  She will be the third fatality in this wreck.

But God wasn't through with her yet.  God has plans for this special girl. 

In the morning the doctors are amazed that she is still alive and decide to clean out the packed cinders imbedded deep in the hole in her head.  They wash out all that can be reached, and close up her scalp the best they can.  It will take time, but the prognosis is now much better ... she should be okay.

Was she just lucky or was the hand of God upon her?  She would say later, God must have been with her because she lived.  Yes, she was almost killed.  And yes, her mom and brother were taken from her ... but she still had her daddy.  But it wouldn't be easy.

Years later, the only remaining evidence of that dark foggy night, other than the bad memories, was the fact that she did have a bad scar on the right side of her forehead at her hairline ... but she learned how to comb her hair down over it, keeping it from showing.

Time stops for no one.  Her life goes on in her small farm town where she meets a young  man her age.  Could there be love in the air?  A relationship grows between them which leads to marriage, a small house, and three sons born to her over the next eight years.  God has blessed them and life is good.

But tragedy from the train wreak 25 years earlier was about to rear it's ugly head again.

For the past twenty years or so, small particles of the cinders that could not be removed from her brain were evidently moving inside of her skull, working down into her ear canal ... so that when she washed her hair these tiny cinders would wash out of her ears periodically.

But they didn't all wash out.  Only the small pieces washed out.  The movement of the larger ones damaged her brain tissue ... or so the doctors thought.

As her 4 year old middle son ... I remember mom became very sick one day as she developed a high fever and couldn't control her movements or speak very well.  It was as if she was out of her head and didn't know what she was doing.  The fever was burning her up.  I was scared ... what was wrong with my mom.

My last memory of her ... still vivid in my mind 66 years later ... is of her screaming, out of her head as she is being loaded into an ambulance for the ride to the hospital.  I never heard her voice again.  Later that very same night, my father sat on the side of my bed and told my older brother and me that our mom wasn't coming home because she was in heaven. 

Oh ... how I missed her.  I was never the same after that.

Dad always said, I was more like her than my two brothers were.  She lost her mom and now I had lost mine.

But God wasn't through with me either.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 (edited) ... "To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die ... a time heal ... a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn ... a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing ... a time to love ...

I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him."

Some things in this present life are forever, like the death of a mother.  But God also made a way for my two brothers and me ... to enjoy life again.

I will speak to this in my next post.

Blessings ...      

Thoughts From A Jewish Woman

From time to time I converse with a Godly woman who is living out her Jewish faith.  I usually reach out to her when I need some insight on things pertaining to Biblical Hebrew traditions, history or questions about the Torah and Talmud.  She also knows about Jesus and the New Testament, and is well versed in the Christian doctrine.  And she isn't afraid to speak about the differences either.

My friend "Chana" said her name comes from the Hebrew word for grace ... something we all need more of.   I guess I should ask her some day why she became interested in the New Testament writings or if she studied about Jesus because He was a Jew.

Oh well, moving on ... I have been re-reading all of her comments to my questions from the past 7 or so years, and have decided to share some of her thoughts and scriptural reasonings with you today.  Hopefully you will be able to glean some useful information from what she has helped me with.

 I asked Chana the following question about the name "Yeshuah" in the Orthodox Jewish Bible found in ... Yeshayah 60:18 which in the K.J.V. is Isaiah 60:18.           

"I was reading Isaiah in the New King James Bible and noticed the word 'Salvation' was capitalized like it was a name, so I went to the Orthodox Jewish Bible and in place of the word salvation they had 'Yeshuah' which I assume is the same as 'Jesus' in English.  Most Christian Bible teachers claim that 'Jesus' in Hebrew is 'Yeshuah'.  Not being a student of Hebrew, I thought I would ask for your opinion.  I was unaware that the Hebrew name of Jesus was in what Christians think of as 'The Old Testament'."

Chana replied ... "It is not capitalized in bibles that are in Hebrew since there are no capitals.  Yeshua is a word that  means salvation.  It is rare for it to be used as a name for a person though.  And in the context, it is not used as a name for a person.  Translating Jesus as Yeshua is a guess.  It could also have been Yehoshua or Joshua from the Greek look of it.  Sounds more like Joshua."

So, thinking back ... I have noticed some Christians often use the name Yeshua when speaking of Jesus or even praying in His name.  Do they think it sounds more spiritual or knowledgeable by mixing in Hebrew with our English?  Do they understand it may only mean Joshua and not Jesus?  I'm just thinking out loud.  I do that a lot.
 
Another time I asked Chana about the keeping the Law, in contrast to grace and what Paul said speaking of the work Jesus did in Colossians 2:14 ... "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to His cross ..."  I explained that the Law was and still is a yardstick, a mirror to show us our sin and our need for mercy rather than God's justice. But also that Jesus did say in Matthew 5:17 ... "Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the prophets.  I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill (the law.)"

Chana replied ... "But you have to keep the law as even Jesus said that not one jot or tittle is done away with.  Paul himself wrote that it is not done away with.  I believe what the NT is telling you is done away, is what you did before you enter baptism or a 'mikvah' (a bath in which certain Jewish ritual purifications are performed) which, because of repentance, makes you another person."  (I believe she is saying, like being born again does in Christianity.)  She continues with ...
 
"But after that there is still the possibility of sin in Christianity and for the Jews of those days.  Otherwise why did Paul throw that man out of their fellowship for having a relationship with his wife's mother?  Why not just let it go?  He was sinning.  Sin means there is law.  The 10 commandments would not be gone with the coming of messiah, only the ceremonial law would go like washing, etc."  (Which I also believe because the ten commandments are God's moral laws which will never change.  Paul covers this in Romans 7 & 8.)

Chana also shared with me about the name of God.  I had noticed many of her friends who commented on her blog posts used the word ... "Hashem" ... as they spoke of God.  We Christians, because of the freedom the grace of God allows, speak the name of Jesus and/or use the term "God" often every day.  Not so in Judaism.

Here's some of what Chana shared with me ...

"The name of God was not used all the time by everyone at all.  A reading of Torah makes this clear.  It is one of those things the bible does not validate and yet so many believe to be true.  The name shared with some was not the name whose initials appear in the form of ... yud hey vav hey ... (YHWH or Yahweh).  No vowel points are given for it so it is impossible to know how the vowels sound at all.

God introduced himself with other names to his friends but not by that particular name at all.  The name of God was never pronounced by anyone except the 'kohen gadol' (high priest) on the day of atonement.

Hashem is 'ha' meaning 'the' ... and 'shem' meaning 'name.'   'The name.'  This is to prevent someone from desecrating the name of God."

So ... just what is the official name of the Hebrew God?  It's the four letters in Hebrew that Chana spoke about ... "YHWH" ... or as we call Him, "Yahweh."  The English pronunciation ... "Yahweh" ... is not considered a legitimate name of God by most Jewish scholars.

There is much more from this wonderful Jewish woman who just happened to befriend this Christian believer.  Things like understanding that the Talmud is really a Law Library.  Chana is well versed in the New Testament and explains things from a Jewish perspective.  Listen as she speaks about this well known story of the woman caught in the act of adultery, who was illegally brought to Jesus in John 8:1-11 ...

"The Talmud defines the law and breaks it down.  For instance, why was the woman in the NT not stoned for adultery?  Well, where are the 2 or 3 eye witnesses to this adultery?  Where is the man?  Was she warned of it once before already?  It was almost impossible to put someone to death in ancient Israel because of the need for eye witnesses who could not know one another!  There was no trial for her.  Her husband had to bring the charges, not strangers and this was a lynch mob really."

Chana says ... "The Pharisees knew all this.  Jesus was following ... 'pikuach nefesh' ... saving a human life which always precedes the law because without mercy there is no justice and the law becomes a sledge hammer.  But with mercy the law is upheld and justice is served."

Chana also said to me once that ... "eating without giving thanks to the Lord is stealing the food He provides."  So she gives thanks before a meal and afterward as well.  Godly wisdom.  I like that.

That's my friend Chana.  You gotta love her and her God ... the one who sent Jesus so we could see who God really was.  A God of love and mercy.  Of course, she sees all that within the Law.  Paul did say ... "the Law is good."  But I still like Jesus being the mediator between God and man.  A man like me ... a broken but redeemed sinner.  

Anyway ... I just wanted to share a little bit of my friend with you today. 

Hope you didn't mind.