It was a dark, moonless night in the winter of 1980 something when I found myself crouched down on an old logging road huddled next to a small pile of burning coals. The brightness of the blaze had long since burned down and now all that was left was a faint amber light with just enough smoke to blow directly into my eyes. Ricky Joe “Bubba” Smeltalot and I had been chasing ‘coons’ all night when we had the bright idea to just build a fire and sit by it while the dogs chased the coons. The dogs seemed okay by this arrangement and before long had barked and howled their way out of hearing distance of us and into hearing distance of a subdivision a mile away. Since “out of sight, out of mind” was a way of life for us we decided to just stay by the fire and tell stories. Ricky Joe was a better liar than me and therefore won the storytelling contest.
As we sat there, suddenly a bright light arched across the sky in the manner of a falling star and seemed to fall several hundred yards distance from us down the logging road. Being of sound mind and judgment and not believing in UFO’s, Ricky Joe and I knew it was no sense in us checking out the phenomenon, hence saving ourselves from being used as a scientific experiment in a pitre dish for some big-headed alien creature from Mars. Leaving the dogs to entertain the neighbors, Ricky Joe and I burnt rubber on the gravel road for forty feet in our haste to satisfy a hunger that had suddenly arisen for a delicious Big Man Burger. The next day we went back and retrieved the truck that had been abandoned so we could have a way to haul the dogs back home.
Later, upon reciting our adventure to our parents, I heard Mom mention something to Dad about something being strange. Finally, they found something they could agree with me about! They then began making subtle attempts to cause me to move out and find a place of my own, but I just kept retrieving my clothes from the front lawn where they had been thrown.
As I reflected on strange happenings that have occurred to me, I happened upon a strange incident that occurred in the Bible. A man, sick of the palsy, had been carried up on a roof, lowered through it, and later walked outside on his own two feet through the front door. I can imagine the looks on the faces of those forced to stay on the outside because of the throng of people. The Bible tells us that there were Pharisees and doctors of the law present, so you can imagine the stir that it caused among the “regular” folks and the interest that was peaked upon seeing a man carried up onto the roof of this house. Greater interest was undoubtedly showed when this same man walked out the door carrying the bed. Someone exclaimed, “We have seen strange things this day.” I’ll say!
Unlike Ricky Joe and me, it seems these people stayed around to see what caused their strange occurrence. It may be that more people need to stay around and see what kind of strange things that God can do. We might find out that it’s not that strange after all.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be! TRUST JESUS NOW
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