God's Hand of Protection

In the past two weeks, our family has experienced a few incidences that turned out to be great teachable moments for our kids to see God's hand of protection on our family.

On Thursday July 17th, we had gone out to run a few errands before eating dinner at Cici's Pizza (which just opened in our area a month or two ago but quickly became our favorite place to go!). As we were driving, we noticed the sky was quickly getting dark and knew a storm was about to hit...and boy did it ever hit! Once the floodgates opened, we were hit with a lot of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning. We stopped at a traffic light on a heavily traveled road and I heard a sound that I can only describe as a "pop". My daughter thought it was thunder, but I said it didn't sound like thunder. I didn't want to turn around and look because we were driving into Allentown and the thought actually crossed my mind that someone may have just been shot! The light turned green and as we started to drive away, my husband commented that the car behind us was pulling off to the side of the road. I then wondered if the person had gotten a flat tire and that's what caused the weird sound. We finished what we had to do and as we came back down the road on the other side, we noticed the car that had been behind us was still off to the side of the road. As we drove past, we noticed there was a car behind that one with the front end all smashed in. It was then that we realized the car directly behind us at the light had been rear-ended, yet they never hit us! On this particular road, cars are usually very close to one another when they stop at lights so we knew that God had protected us. My kids envisioned an angel standing behind our car stopping the car behind us from hitting our car.

On Saturday July 26th, we went over to my parents' house to go swimming. We were swimming for awhile and my husband said "we should get going soon". For some reason, I allowed the kids to continue swimming for awhile longer. When we did finally get ready to leave, my mom said the kids could have some muffins she had made that morning. I didn't want them to eat them there since we hadn't eaten dinner yet, so I told them to pick which kind they wanted (she had made blueberry ones as well as chocolate chip) and I'd put them in a bag so they could eat them later. Micah couldn't decide which one he wanted, so my mom finally said to just take what was left (there were four...just enough for each of us!). We were just about to leave and my dad stopped us and said he wanted to give us some blueberries so I could make blueberry pancakes (since Sarah made a comment about wanting me to make them and I said I didn't have blueberries to make them with! LOL!). So we finally got going later than we wanted to, but we quickly discovered it was no accident that we had experienced those "delays"!

We had only driven a few minutes when we came upon an accident that had happened just minutes before. The police and rescue workers weren't even there yet! There were 2 cars involved...one car had an older woman in the driver's seat leaning out of her car with a stunned look on her face. The other car was a jeep. There were at least 2 male occupants that had been in that car. The one was lying face down on the side of the road and the other was walking around with blood all over his face and shirt. I almost got out to see if there was anything I could do to help, but I saw someone already had a cell phone calling for help and another lady was standing in the street directing traffic and telling us to go. I didn't want my kids to see anything that would give them nightmares so we continued to drive.

A few miles down the road, we saw why the police and other rescue workers hadn't arrived at that accident yet....they were already at the scene of another accident!! We had to take a short detour because they had the road blocked, but we came out at a light and could see the accident that had also occurred on the very road we travel home on. We noticed two rescue vehicles were headed towards the first accident we saw, so my kids and I all prayed for the safety of those involved in the two accidents as well as the paramedics, firefighters, and police that were responding to those accidents. This is something we always do when we see an emergency vehicle with its lights and sirens on, although my son usually prays for them even if they don't have their lights and sirens on!

When we finally made it home, I pointed out to Sarah specifically the various delays that had occurred before we left and that any one of those (or a combination of some of them) prevented us from being involved in one of those accidents. I then told Sarah a few stories of some close calls I have had in my life and when I was done she said "Now I KNOW God is real!" I couldn't help but smile and thank the Lord for His protection, and how it enabled me to teach my children more about God.