God's Hand

I would like to think that people view me as being a religious person, and I feel that I am. I have had too many experiences showing me the existence of a loving God to ever doubt his existence. There are those who are doubters, and as much as I would like to shake them, and show them some of the things I have seen and felt, it just doesn't work that way. Each person must decide, and have their own proofs. You cannot borrow that kind of experience.

In the hopes of sharing some of my proofs, to give hope to those who doubt, I would like to relate one of mine.

I worked for several summers for a church youth program, a week long camp where they were instructed and given many other experiences. In this program we had the need to have a huge support vehicle for carrying extra gear. Ours took the form of a 3 ton, red, flatbed truck with a four foot railing around the bed. This truck had plenty of power to climb the hills, as long as it could get traction. One of the trails we used (yes, the kids had to hike on this program) had a section we as counsellors liked to call "Killer Hill". The kids would hit this hill about five miles into their hike, and it was four miles long. The first five miles were fairly flat with a river running alongside most of the way, and since our program was in the summer, it was usually quite hot. Time and time again, the kids would want to pray when we stopped, and ask for rain to cool them down. Now this isn't the part of the story to show my proof, but serves its own proof quite well. As counsellors, we would always tell them, "You really don't want it to rain." Invariably, they would argue that they did, and so, more often than not, God would answer their prayers and give them rain. I don't know how many have been in a rainstorm in the high mountains, but it can cool temperatures dramatically. It also makes mud. So, shortly after it started raining, we would hit killer hill in the rain, cold, and mud. Every step you took forward would result in a half step slide back. This section of road was cut from a grey clay bank in the hillside that just became slick in the rain. So now back to our support vehicle. The staff member driving came over a little rise in the road, and headed down into a swell on the other side. With the slick conditions, the truck took its own route, rather than following the driver's wishes, and slid to within inches of toppling off the road before coming to a stop with one tire hanging out over mid air. We were able to get the truck back onto the center of the road, but it did not have the traction to climb the hill. We tried everything we could think of to help. We shoveled sand under the wheels. We cut brush and deadfalls to put under the wheels for traction. We got the entire staff together to help push, but nothing we did could get the truck moving. Finally we stopped to take a breath, and decided as a group that we needed to pray, for clearly we could not move this truck on our own. So we knelt there in the mud, all of us gathered together, and asked God to help us to do what we could not do alone. Rising, we went back to what we knew we could do. We cut some more brush,we shoveled a little more sand, and then we all got together to help push. The driver put the truck in gear, and then our miracle happened. It felt to those of us there, like a huge hand lifted the back end of the truck, and pushed . All of the things we had done had not helped untill we prayed. Now we could not even keep up with the truck as it went up the hill. Upon reaching the top, we stopped the truck, and when all of the staff caught up, we again knelt, and thanked God for what we knew was his help. We knew it! We had tried, and we could not move the truck, but God did.

God lives and loves us. He wants to be a part of our lives, we simply need to invite him in. Take hope and take care.