Category: Storytime

I have begun an intermittent series where I am recalling those times where God has visited me in remarkably gracious ways. I do not use the word “miracle” for these events because I believe miracles ended with the close of the New Testament canon. It is my conviction that miracles are defined as those happenings wherein God immediately interrupts nature in order to accomplish that which cannot be explained except for the moving of the finger of God. They have as their purpose to confirm either the presence of God or His mark of approval upon His messengers. Because we know have God’s final word as spoken in Christ as in the Scriptures, miracles, as defined above have ended.

However, there can be no doubt that God still works in ways the Puritans described as “remarkable providences.” In the working of these remarkable providences we avoid a Deistic mindset that teaches that God created the world and then became remote to it, allowing it to run uninterrupted according to the laws of nature and nature’s God. There are times in our lives that God works in such an extraordinary way that we can only refer to it as a “remarkable providence.” I have had several of these in my life, two of which I’ve already chronicled here.

The one I write of now occurred in the summer of 1974. I was about to begin my Freshman year of High School and was daily participating in summer football 2 a day practices. Looking back, playing football was fantasy. At that age I weighed 90 pounds soaking wet. However, great are the dreams of a 14 year old.

We lived in the rural part of Sturgis, Michigan and if we wanted to go into town for just about anything it was a matter of hopping on the bicycle and pedaling into town. Prior to 1974 that really wasn’t a big deal was we were only about 2.5 miles outside of down. However, around this time the city Fathers decided to shut down our direct road into town in order to expand the city airport. That meant a much longer ride into town that included having to ride about .5 mile on a busy two lane highway (US 12 that runs between Sturgis and White Pigeon). These were the days before Jimmy Carter reduced the speed limit to 55 on these two lanes. In 1974 the speed limit on US 12 was 70.

As it turned out on this day I was riding my brother’s brand new 10 speed which he had won in a raffle. My bike was broken and we routinely mixed and matched rides. My brother would never get a chance to ride his raffle winnings. He also would never wear his special bowling shirt again because for some reason I was wearing that short-sleeve bowling shirt that day.

I was returning from football practice that day. I was going to grab a bite to eat at home and turn around and ride back for the next practice. It was a hot summer day and the traffic was zooming by as usual. It was not unusual for a semi to roll past us so closely that the wash of the suction he created would propel us forward with great delight.

I just pedaled past the Harding’s Grocery story. I was about half way to where I would hang a right to be on a comparative back rode that would take me home without much traffic. The last thing I remember was hearing someone laying on the horn. I remember not thinking much about it as drivers were often expressing their disgust  with having to navigate around a bicycle — even if we were careful to keep on the burn of the road.

However, this time there was impact after the horn. A young female driver hit the back of my bike and sent me flying. Later I learned that she was traveling between 55-70 miles an hour.  I’m pretty sure most people would agree with me that the kid on the bike doesn’t typically walk away from this kind of incident. Here is where the remarkable providence comes in.

I do remember cascading through the air. I remember hitting the ground the first time. After that I remember nothing before regaining consciousness. Upon regaining consciousness I lay perpendicular to the highway. My right arm was outstretched over my head. My left arm was at my side. I went to stand up and suddenly realized that the automobile had stopped on my right hand. As I looked in front of me I saw the back passenger side tire sitting squarely atop my right hand — 18 inches away from my head.

I heard the driver crying hysterically and I began screaming at her to get back in the car and put the vehicle in drive to inch off my hand. I have no idea if she heard me. I have no idea how that vehicle got off my right hand but it quickly did. Naturally, my first response was to stand up and start screaming ruddy murder. Everything is fuzzy after that. They tell me that another person had stopped and immediately sought to control me and get me to sit down. Blood was everywhere. My hand was a mangled mess and there was a substantial cut somewhere in my head that was driving more concern for the medical personnel than my hand. I did not feel that wound at all. I only felt my right hand on fire.

Of course the remarkable providence is that I wasn’t killed that day. Now, some cynic would immediately say something like, “If you’re God works such providences why did He ordain the accident to begin with.” My standard answer to these kind of questions is to quote the prophet who said, “Whom God would heal, He first wounds.” God loves His people and all that enters into their lives is through the hand of a sovereign God who loves them for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, God delivered me from sure death that day. On my calendar it was a remarkable providence. There was several surgeries after that to get my hand working again. There was frequent hospital time. A couple skin grafts and tons of stitches. There was all kinds of occupational therapy. Tons of coco butter applied to the hand to keep my hand supple from the scarring.

That is just one more of those remarkable providences in my life that I look back on and see that God loves me for reason all His own. One more remarkable providence where my Father has told me again that He will never leave me nor forsake me. One more part of my own personal recital theology that I recite when I am again in a situation that looks hopeless.

The God of the Bible has indeed been to me over the decades, “Jehovah Jireh” — the God who provides. As Francis Schaeffer once wrote, I have found to be true experientially, “He Is There, And He Is Not Silent.”

Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Addendum

What I have taken from all these remarkable providences is that I should not be fearful or worrisome in the service of my master. Now, my wife will tell you that I am bad to worry at times but I try at those times to practice my recital theology. The Lord Christ has demonstrated in my 66 years that He is faithful and if it be the case that He be so faithful then it would be shameful to be cowardly in His service. My recital theology gives me courage and is the cure for my disposition to worry.  I only wish I was more brave and less of a worry wart.

God sets the solitary in families;
He brings out those who are bound into prosperity;
But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

Psalm 68:6

In the last entry talking about God’s remarkable providence and His ability to do the unexpected in the lives of His people in order to keep them and protect them we looked at events in 1988-1989. With this next entry we consider 1976-1977 when I was still yet what today we call “a teenager.” Interesting thing about the word “teenager” is that is didn’t even exist before 1950. Sometime in the 1950s the word and idea was created in order to market to another niche of people with the purpose of capturing more of their disposable income.

Anyway, I had just turned 17 when, because of my own sullenness and rebelliousness I had managed to find myself without a living situation. I still had a year of high school to complete and even though I was promised by my Father that he would allow me to finish my last year at the school system I had been in my entire life that promise had been suddenly pulled. He eventually cast me out of his home because “I was a troubled adolescent.” I tried living with my Mother for while and even began my Senior year in that school system but I was not a happy camper in that new school environment and due to my own fault I had worn out my welcome in that context.

Instability was the theme of the day at that time. I had lived almost my whole first 16 years at one address in one home. From that time forward, over the course of the next year I bopped around living in eight different locations – most of them house trailers – usually, but not always, with one of my parents.

On a Sunday during October of 1976 we were back in Sturgis and I was attending the evening service. Most of my friends were in this church and being around them was a refuge. I wish I could say I was in Church because I was such a righteous and holy teenager but that would be a unrighteous lie.

I was supposed to meet my Mother after the evening service in order to go 2 hours north to her new living situation. However, the chap who worked with the youth group choir (we had a large one) decided that he needed to counsel me and strongly insisted that I come to his house after the service so he could counsel me. Even though I did not ask for any “counseling” he apparently was compelled to “help” me. I’m sure his intentions were good.

His house was just a short walk behind the Church and as my ride had not yet arrived I decided to yield to his insistence. I remember nothing of that counseling time except the odd white spittle that, for some reason, seemed to collect at the corner of his mouth while talking. I remember wondering, “how is that possible?” Remember, I said I was a rebellious and sullen kid.

Long story short …. I missed my ride. Folks were still milling around the church, once I had made the short walk back, and one family, noticing I was all dressed up with no place to go, offered to take me home that evening. That is where I stayed for several days but it was not a permanent solution as that young couple with young children were having their own marriage problems.

The ministers at the Church got more involved serving as liaisons with my folks. I have no idea what those discussions involved, but soon enough I found yet another family from the church I knew offering to let me live with them for my final year of High School. This was God’s remarkable providence. I was not an easy lad. Indeed, I was damaged goods. This family who took me in was young with a baby, a toddler and two young daughters. Yet, out of the largesse of kindness in their hearts and out of a sense of Christian responsibility John and Roseann took me in for my Senior of High school.

It was remarkable providence also because the court system at that time felt they had been cheated by not being involved in the decision making process as to where I was going to live. I remember a visit with the “Friend of the Court” at the new home I was now a member of (interestingly enough that home was right across the street from the county courthouse) and during that meeting the “Friend of the Court” said directly to me, “The court does not think that a 17 year old should be the one making the decision about where he should live.” It was not the first time I had engaged this surly “Friend of the Court,” and I curtly responded that “I was not aware that the court spent much time in the practice of thinking.” Anyway, it was God’s remarkable providence again that found the court leaving me alone for the next 12 months.

It was only years and years later that it registered with me what a remarkable providence all of this was. I desperately needed stability and stability meant being in the familiar context of church and school. I honestly do not think I would have graduated High School if the Davis family had not, in God’s remarkable providence, opened their home to me.

I was still a messed up kid. When the following September rolled around I was miles away from being ready for college – but I was more ready for that than I would have been if it was not for John & Roseann. I floundered terribly in my first two years of college (that’s another story for another time) but if not for God’s remarkable providence I would not have even made it to University at all.

When I look back and realize all that they had to sacrifice in order to take me in I am amazed by their generosity but I am even more amazed at God’s remarkable providence. What makes all this even more amazing is that today if a young family like the Davis family came to me and asked my counsel about taking in a troubled youth for his Senior year in High school for one year I know without a shadow of doubt, I would say, “Don’t do it.”

I am an older man now and as I look back I am astonished over and over again at all the occasions where God’s remarkable providence demonstrated itself in vibrant living colors.

It was just a few weeks after Ebenezer’s Scrooge’s wondrous transformation and finally Ebenezer’s former fiance, Belle, finally got wind of the change in her former beau. Upon hearing the report Belle had to see for herself so she secretly put herself in the way of Ebenezer’s acts of kindness to see for herself.

Having witnessed it all, she was drawn back to the enchantment she once had for Ebenezer and this enchantment increased the long endured  misery she had with her current husband. Life had been hard since she had spurned Ebenezer. Her husband was so generous towards orphans, immigrants, and the Oliver Twist types in London that she and the children often went around in rags and sometimes went hungry. She had tried to talk sense into her husband but he always responded with… “Hey, we need to love everybody the same.” Her husband had used the same type of reasoning for his dalliances with other women. “Now, Belle, honey, it’s hardly right or Christian, in light of the fact of the ‘Brotherhood of all men’ that I should favor you above all the other Sheilas.” And so Belle had spent her married life in misery constantly thinking that being married to a miser like Ebenezer could have been any worse.

And now Ebenezer was a changed man and her own Eberhard remained so unchanged. Belle couldn’t help but wonder why three spirits had not visited her husband … why Eberhard could not have been transformed just as Ebenezer clearly had been.

The children were all grown now and Belle was left alone with this spendthrift that she had grown to find repulsive. If Ebenezers later years could be lived as a changed man then why couldn’t her life also be changed from what she had endured all her life?

Belle decided not to wait for an extraterrestrial visitation from a syndical of Spirits. She would take matters in her own hands.

And so Belle began to plot. It all began with her separation and divorce from Eberhard. She had proper reasons to do so for decades but now with the possibility of returning to a transformed Ebenezer and a life lived of comparative comfort the iron was hot for such a divorce from Eberhard.

When Belle told Eberhard of her intentions, he merely shrugged and reminded her that he had plenty of other phillies in the pasture.  Belle rejoiced at this response. Now, she had to set the hook for Ebenezer.

On Christmas Eve day of the year following the visitation of the Spirits Belle put herself in the way of Ebenezer in the best dress she had left, along with all the feminine accouterments that she thought would be necessary for Ebenezer’s next transformation. Belle thought of herself as the Spirit of Christmas Femme-fatale. “And why not” she thought, “after all Ebenezer will be even happier after he sweeps me off my feet.”

And just as Belle planned Ebenezer remembered all that was past when all of Belle was present again before him. In no short amount of time Ebenezer had “wrenched” out of Belle her “story.” The sympathy for Belle swelled to levels not seen since that same sympathy had swelled for Tiny Tim almost a year ago.

From that point on, the old flame of the old romance was kindled. Just as Ebenezer had been transformed by the Spirits of the previous year, so Ebenezer was transformed by the  Spirit of Belle and in July a Christmas wedding was planned.

And for the few years that Belle and Ebenezer had left together Ebenezer never treated her as if she was “just another woman.” Ebenezer prized her above all women and even treated Belle’s children as having a unique relationship to him. All the egalitarianism of Eberhard was gone from Belle’s life and her life was now transformed.

They had only read books that had described families that were quite clearly altogether different than clan Franken. Those books were usually the history books that described a less enlightened age when family units were morphologically the same and would suffer from a bland longevity wherein family units stayed together for decades.

That was the time before researchers had discovered that true satisfaction could only be discovered in a rotating pleroma of family members.

The Franken’s were just such an example of such a family. Gathered around the table for the Martin Luther King Holiday the Franken’s were recognized throughout the community as being the poster children for what destiny had always intended for the family to be. Father Franken (Shelby) was born with two left arms but due to the work of the Handicapper General of the United States (a new cabinet position established in 3066) he had risen to be a professional athlete and Captain on a all right-handed girls volleyball team.

While during his time on the Volleyball team, Shelby had met, wooed, and finally had a child with Terry. Terry, standing 4′ 2″ was one of the stars of the Sarasota Spikes — a team which was a member of the multigenerational, multigendered, multiracial “National Organization Uniting Volleyballers Each Advancing Uniformity (NOVEAU).” The league was not so constricted so as to compete only in Volleyball. Many years they would spend half the season competing against an All-Start Rugby team from the United Arab Emirates — who of course had ceased being uniquely Arab centuries ago. Terry made the team because of the Handicapper General’s rules that Volleyball teams were required to have an equal number of people under 5 feet as they had people playing for them who were over 6 feet.

Shelby and Terry didn’t particularly like each other when they first met, but on the one weekend a year where they were required, by league rules to cohabitate with one another, they discovered they disliked each other less than they disliked everyone else on the team. As such true love was inevitable.

Shelby’s original last name was Fran. Terry’s original last name was Kenn. As such their “married” name was “Franken.”

Of course, Shelby and Terry were never really married. Marriage was one of those ancient vestiges from “the way things used to be.” However, they did have children. Turns out that both Shelby and Terry were quite fertile. Shelby ended up birthing 3 of the children, while Terry birthed four of the children. Neither Shelby, nor Terry, were certain who the original sperm donators of their children were but as that was a custom long disregarded neither one cared.

Naturally, other children had been adopted by Shelby and Terry. Indeed, there were times when the joke was that there were no children who weren’t adopted by Shelby and Terry — such was their magnificent generosity. Shelby and Terry loved all children the same, yet despite all this love Shelby and Terry had been taken to court several times by children unknown to them claiming that they had a need that Shelby and Terry didn’t meet, and as such Shelby and Terry were involved in child abuse. Fortunately, on these cases the US Handicapper General would often step in to rescue Shelby and Terry’s good name by writing a check from the US Government for the well being of the children bring suit in the name of Shelby and Terry Franken.

Five of the “biological” children were vertically challenged like Terry. Three of the seven were born with two left hands. Two of them (Norm and Norma) were miserable birth defects being neither short nor blessed with the absence of right arms. Despite these birth defects Norm and Norma were treated as part of the family.

In later years Norm and Norma made up for their birth defects by having children together. When that happened they were never considered abnormal again.

It should be noted here that Shelby and Terry had not been the only parents of this anti-family family. The whole Volleyball team had rotated in out of the bedroom that had been originally claimed by Shelby and Terry.  One of the things that made the Franken Family so admired was that it was so undefinable. Even the children didn’t know completely what it meant to be a member of the Franken Family.

One thing that the whole family had in common was the same pigment skin color. One of the requirement of NOVEAU was that pigment be of a very particularly mottled character. In such a fashion NOVEAU reasoned that they could broaden their appeal while at the same time serving as an example of the necessity for all colors to bleed into one. Indeed, so strict was the NOVEAU League on this rule that any fan attending a game also had to have mottled skin pigment.

One thing that NOVEAU emphasized was the elimination of distinctions since distinctions were the reason for all disharmony and hard feelings in the world. This policy explained why NOVEAU was not just about volleyball. Indeed, anyone attending a NOVEAU match were not exactly sure just what they would be spectators of. Sometimes, it was certain to be Volleyball, while at other times it could be rugby, shuttlecock, darts, or fencing, or even some combination of all the above. At those times the rules that would be followed were called “Watterson-ball” rules, named after the first President of the League — Bill Watterson.

If they had lived in 2020 Shelby and Terry and the children would have been called “Cross-dressers” but since all distinctions everywhere had been eliminated there was no way to know what cross-dressing would look like. Shelby enjoyed the skorts while Terry was a big fan of the Kilt. (They used to call them “Scottish Kilts”) but the whole notion of “Scott” had long been lost.

Being stars in the NOVEAU league Shelby and Terry traveled extensively and they were constantly amazed to occasionally come across locations where distinctions still existed. These poor people lived as social outcasts considered as the derelicts of society. Despite all the global and local peer pressure these offscourings of the planet marshalled on determined that the now obsolete categories of gender, race, ethnicity, and intelligence mattered.

Shelby and Terry were of course “Christians,” though they often commented to one another that they didn’t see much difference between themselves and the other members of their Volleyball team who were not “Christians.” It certainly wasn’t something that anybody spent any time talking about. After all, if faith has to know its place, and the place for faith certainly wasn’t on a table tennis court.

Shelby and Terry had learned their faith from an early age. They had been dedicated as infants and from the tenderest of years they had been members of “Most Conservative Presbyterian Church Possible in the World (MCPCP)” There they were catechized how God found it blasphemous to even think in terms of gender, age, race, intellect, or ability. Before they could speak they were taught that being a Christian means being saved from nature and entering into the grace world where the carnal distinctions invented by man are forever eliminated into an ocean of God’s great undiscriminating love for everything and everyone.

Indeed, for Shelby and Terry their Christian faith meant everything to them, although they had a hard time understanding how there was a time when Christians would have condemned Shelby and Terry for being not true to Christ or the Christian faith just because they were intersexed queers who were pressing the Crown Rights of King Jesus to eliminate antiquated notions of marriage, family, nation, gender, race, intelligence, and age.

Still, Shelby and Terry just knew in their hearts that they were doing the King’s work and they were resolved that together via their work with NOVEAU, they would stamp out the remaining bigotry that remained in this sin sick world of God blaspheming distinctions.