This is in response to your card asking me for a “miracle” story. Upon thinking about how to respond, I realized that my wife and I have been delivered from death or serious bodily injury so often that they have become expected and unextraordinary. This is not to say the Lord is not the source of these rescues but they have become part of the fabric of the sanctified life. I have come to see those who are amazed by miracles as perhaps lacking in faith, as if they do not expect the Lord to protect His sheep.
Sorry, but the incidents that take more than two sentences to relate are not the flashy kind. On two occasions the Lord delivered my family from financial difficulties in a way that bears the unmistakable shadow of His hand. The first was when I entered seminary, June of 1997 when the Lord gave my wife employment at the public library, a position virtually identical to the one she relinquished so I could drag the family half way across the Pacific Ocean and most of the way across the North American continent. The position should have been filled half a year before but the first candidate who was given the position inexplicably declined and forced Allen County to start the whole process again, and my wife squeaked in as a last minute applicant in the second round and was given the position. The one that probably interest you more occurred here in Bay County. We lived in a rented house in Parker because the house we owned while I was attending seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, had not sold. We had it listed for sale during the whole year I served a vicarage in Michigan and received not a single offer. Neither did we get a single offer during the first year I served as a pastor in Panama City. The rental agent informed us we would have to vacate the rental in Parker because the owner intended to re-occupy the house upon her return from Texas. Here we were stuck with a home that would not sell and were being ejected from the rental residence while still learning how to shepherd a church. Five days later the realty agent in Fort Wayne called to say we received two bids for our house. Immediately upon ending that phone call I turned my face upward and said to the Lord, “You’re showing off.” This is not the typical Lutheran way of expressing thanks to Him; but that’s what I did. (This was immediately followed by a more conventional prayer of thanks; in fact, it began in Latin.)