I spent much of my childhood living in a small rural community, attending a local village primary school, surrounded by rolling fields and woodland. Growing up in this setting gave me a love of the countryside, which has never really dissipated. It also gave me an appreciation of our farmers, and how hard they work, in all weathers, to ensure the land produces enough food for us to eat.
Perhaps this is why, when I stumbled upon this incredible ‘light through the cracks’ story, something in it immediately resonated – because it’s set in a rural context.
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It a story that dates back to the Covid pandemic, four years ago, during the second of the UK-wide Covid lockdowns, when we were all confined to our homes, socially isolated, and only going out once a day.
It features a man called Andy who works on a farm in central southern England. It is an ordinary autumnal Monday, during that lockdown. And Andy is out in one of the farm’s fields, rolling seed.
He gets out of the tractor to remove some stones from the tractor’s path, when, suddenly, there is a terrible freak accident.
He is run over by eight tonnes of farm machinery.
His brain is injured. His face is fractured. His pelvis is crushed. His lung is punctured. His liver and other internal organs are badly damaged.
Alone in a field in a remote location, unable to move, and rapidly losing consciousness, Andy believes he will die.
But what follows next is nothing short of miraculous – and God alone deserves all the glory!
If you have seven minutes to spare, you can watch Andy, and his wife Helen, share the full story here:
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When terrible accidents happen, such as the one experienced by Andy, we often have no prior warning and we can feel helpless in the immediate aftermath. (I know this first hand, and you can read the story of my own terrible accident in the opening chapter of my book, Light through the Cracks.)
But God can put people in places where they aren’t meant to be. God can stir up prayer support from unexpected places. God can work miracles of healing, which confound the medical professionals.
Because God alone is sovereign.
So, let me ask you this:
Have you ever been in an accident, or in other terrible circumstances, which left you with feelings of utter helplessness in the aftermath? If this is you, how did you respond? If it happened to someone you know, how did they respond?
In what ways were you (or they) aware of God’s sovereignty? Where was their evidence of God bringing about ‘coincidences’ that were actually his miraculously ordained ‘God-incidences?
As ever, constructive comments are welcome below.
Photo by Manfred Richter via Pixabay.
