Thanks Be to God

Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!
2 Corinthians 9:15

The turkey is in the oven and I have a moment to sit down before the fun begins in earnest. Well, before I need to finish cleaning the house and peel the potatoes anyway.

It is a day to be especially thankful, a day to make certain that we stop for a moment, count our blessing, and acknowledge the One who loves us more than anyone else ever could; One who is beside us each step of the way, and who paid the ultimate price that we might have our sins covered by the blood of Christ.

This Thanksgiving Day I am thankful for many things but one in particular comes to mind. It involves a wayward son, a mother's desperate prayer, and a near head on collision with a DOT dump truck...

Moms and Dads want nothing more that to see their children grow into successful, law abiding citizens, but sometimes our children follow a path quite the opposite of what we had hoped and dreamed. Though our situation could have been much more dire, I knew deep inside we were headed in that direction if something in our son's life didn't change. In a moment of desperation I cried out to the Lord, "Please,... ... ... do whatever it takes..." It was a frightening prayer because I knew that sometimes God uses desperate measures to reach His children.

Dave and Leta had been married for about five months when I got a teary phone call from my daughter in law. All she knew was that Dave had been in a bad accident, he was still alive, and had been taken to a hospital in Rochester, NY. It was Dave's friend, Chris, who really knew the severity of the situation and when I watched tears roll down his cheeks in the waiting room at the ER, I had to stifle the panic that wanted to well up within.

Dave had been delivering pizzas for work when he stopped to make a left-hand turn. It was a dark rainy day when on a cold, soggy stretch of highway not far from home, he was rear-ended by a pickup truck which pushed him into oncoming traffic. The on coming traffic was the DOT dump truck whose driver swerved just enough to avoid a full head-on impact that surely would have left our son dead. Miraculously, he survived the initial collision, the subsequent spinning and bouncing off the dump truck, and narrowly escaped being thrown out the passenger side window. He also walked away with seeming minor injuries which continue this day to be little reminders of God's mercy. Little did we know that he had actually fractured his C-7 (neck).

Rarely does a life change overnight or in an instant, and there was a moment when I looked heavenward and said, "God, it didn't work," but in His love God had begun a work in Dave that He wasn't about to give up on. He began to open my son's eyes to the love and grace of God, to a Savior who actually gave His life that we might live, and to Dave's own responsibility to give back to God which was rightfully His to begin with.

So, this on Thanksgiving, like several before, I am thankful for the life of my son and God's amazing mercy and grace in not only his life, but ours as well.