I was told I saved someone’s life last night.

It was the end of a three-day stretch at work for me. Since I work 13 hours a day, that means I hadn’t had much “non-work” interaction all weekend.  Last week was my mother’s birthday, and I was not able to connect with her on her birthday, so I decided to call her.  I got her voice mail (again…just like on her birthday), so I left a message.  I waited a few minutes to see if she would call right back, but she didn’t, so I decided to call my best friend Mike instead.  Thanks to the wonders of modern cell phone technology I knew I hadn’t talked to him in four weeks.

Here we are getting ready to go to a Colts game when his family came out to visit us in 2007.

I called his cell phone.  He answered, and said, “Hey, my battery is almost dead.”  I asked him “Do you want me to call your house phone instead?”  He said yes, so I futzed around with my phone for a minute (his cell is preset, not his home phone), and called his other number.  He answered.  We started talking about stuff that is important to us (probably not to you).

We talked for 49 minutes, according to my phone.  About 40 minutes into the conversation, he informed me that his wife just told him I just saved his life.  I said, “What do you mean?”  He said that before supper, he was working on his car, and he was underneath it. He came in to eat, and then he was going to go back out and finish.  I called, so he stayed inside talking to me.

His boys heard a loud noise from outside. They looked and saw that the car had fallen off the jacks, crashing to the ground. If I had not called him when I did, there is a good chance he would have been underneath the car. He could have been injured badly, or even killed. Mike is the pastor of a church, the husband of his wife, and the father of his six children ages twelve to six months. And he has been my best friend for the past twenty-two years.

I am convinced that God intervenes in our lives in miraculous ways almost every day, but we don’t get to see all the things He does because they are behind the scenes.  There has only been one other point in my life that I knew God miraculously intervened. I am convinced Romans 8:28 is absolutely true, in that God is working all things for the good of those who love Him.

I praise God that He orchestrated events so that my mother went to bed early last night (so I wasn’t talking to her).  I praise God that I got off work on time so I was free to make the call.  I praise God that Mike’s cell phone battery was almost dead, so he couldn’t talk to me while working on the car. I praise God that my friend is still alive today.

I know that tomorrow is not guaranteed for any of us on this earth.  I know, as much as anyone can know about another, that my friend Mike will go to be with God when he dies. I know that if he had died, that I would see him again one day. I know that, even though we only see each other two or three times a year, one day we will not be separated by space and time.

I know these things because Jesus Christ came to earth two thousand years ago to die on the cross so that the penalty of my sin could be removed.  He died so that the debt of punishment I owed to God would be satisfied. And He rose again, to show that, if I trust in Him, I too will rise from the dead at the end of this age.  I know that when my time on earth is over, I will be with my brothers and sisters in Christ forever, worshiping God and praising Him for His goodness.  Do you know what will happen to you when you die?  If you don’t, please read the Gospel of John. Send me a message, because nothing in your life is more important than that.

Praise God my friend is alive and unharmed.  Praise God He saw fit to use me to protect Mike. God is good all the time.