Grace and Salvation

Today I have a testimony that is as much someone else's story as it is my own, but in all aspects it is still just another bright and shining witness of the glorious goodness and mercy of God. Thirty nine years ago this summer I was witness to a great tragedy turned to joy, and I've reflected back on it many times through the years with keenness of memory and thankful appreciation. This event took place several years before I was born again and began my life in the Lord. I was working as a lifeguard at a public pool, and it was shortly before closing time around 8:30 p.m, with not many people left swimming. Myself and four or five others were standing and talking by the shallow end of the larger pool, about ten or twelve feet away from the corner of the pool. Two of those with me were our pool manager, who also was a policeman; and a friend of his who was the manager of another public pool, who was a policeman as well. There were several young children playing in the corner of the pool near to us, and I was kind of watching them as we talked there. Suddenly a girl screamed and said her little brother was on the bottom of the pool and not coming up. Now it was only three feet deep at that place but being on the bottom and not moving is not a good sign. Anyway, as soon as we heard her which was immediately, our manger got over there quickly and pulled the boy out. The child was turning purple and it was clear that he was not breathing. So the two pool managers/policemen put him in the grass with lightning speed and began to administer CPR to him, including mouth to mouth resuscitation. An ambulance was also called immediately upon the girl telling us that the boy was on the bottom. The two managers continued feverishly with their efforts and the ambulance came quickly, and the boy was taken to the hospital with us not knowing whether he had been, or would be revived. The two managers/policemen went also to the hospital, and a short while later we received a call from our manager who told us that the child had been revived and was conscious; which we all just jumped up and down with joy over. We were told that when he came to, he said "I'm alive, I'm alive." He actually did clinically die for a short period of time, and the doctors felt that he would have permanent brain damage as a result. I was a lifeguard and pool manager for nine years and this was the only actual drowning that I ever witnessed, God be thanked. But all through the years I've thought about that day from time to time, and about that seven year old boy, wondering what had become of him. I have always remembered his name, and I even remembered where he lived, as we had to fill out an accident report for the pool, and for the police.

And throughout the thirty two years that I've been in the service of Jesus, I've occasionally hoped that one day I would cross paths with him again, and I think I even prayed about it once or twice. Well, the night before last, my sons and I met up with my wife at a lake and camping ground where she and her sister, along with a friend of her sister, had been camping for several days. I had seen her sister's friend once but this was the first time I actually met her. But shortly after we got there I heard her speaking to my youngest son about his middle name, which is Daniel. I heard her say that she had a brother named Daniel, then I went into our tent which was away from where they were at. Well, nothing unusual about any of that. But a few minutes later, my other son who was talking with her also, asked her where she had grown up; and she explained to him that it was the area around Wyandotte pool, which is where I worked. Well, he told her that I had been a lifeguard and pool manger there, at which time she told him that her brother had drowned there when they were young, and that he lived. So my son came and found me and told me that this woman's brother had drowned at the pool where I was a lifeguard, and immediately I remembered her saying a few minutes earlier that her brother's name was Daniel, which was the boy's name. I cannot begin to describe what I felt at that moment, but I rushed over to where she was and I said, "Oh gosh, what was the last name of your family and your brother?" And she told me, and there it was! It was him, and here I was with his sister, who also is a sister in Christ, thirty nine years later randomly at a lake campground over an hour from where I live. Her parents live just a short way from this campground, and she had been visiting them. That is the only reason that she was even there. I was really overwhelmed with this, and sat there at the picnic table and wept with gratitude toward God and with long memory of that evening all those years ago. I felt like I had gone back in time, and I knew also that the Lord had seen my heart and my desire to find out about the boy; and had brought it to pass in his time, and in his way. It was really a moving event for me, and it's all I could think about while I was swimming and riding the jet-ski for a couple of hours, and for the rest of the night for that matter. Nobody but God could possibly know how much this meant to me to find this out. But it gets even better than that. I got to hear the other side of this death to life miracle that took place before I even knew miracles existed, and this is her testimony. And boy oh boy is it a good one! She was thirteen years old, and though she had not been raised in a particular environment of faith, she had actually started reading the Bible that summer, and was thinking about God and who he is, and such things as that.

Well, she was the girl who hollered at us about her brother being on the bottom of the pool, and her mother was there as well. As her mother became frantic and hysterical at the beginning of this traumatic situation, this girl told her, "Mom, come over here and let's pray." So she and her mother bowed their faces down to the concrete beside the pool, and prayed. The girl said that when she got down to pray, she remembered reading where Jesus said, "If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." So when she prayed she said, "In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I ask you God to please bring my brother back to life." Now this was going on slightly away from where the men were doing CPR on her brother, and we were all watching them, so I don't remember seeing the girl and her mother bowed down praying. Her prayer was short, but it was obviously sincere and in faith. She then got up and went closer to where her brother was in the grass, and she saw a flickering light come into her brother's hand and go up his arm. Now none of us saw that, but then again none of us had prayed like she did either. There's no doubt that she saw her brother's spirit come back into his body, upon her desperate request to the Lord for him. And it was her that was by her brother in the hospital when he came to himself, and it was her that he immediately and excitedly told upon regaining consciousness, "I'm okay, I'm alive!" Neither did the boy suffer any brain damage as a result of the drowning, and he is forty six now. She said that what happened there and then at the pool was her very first realization of the actual living and present reality of God, and that he is indeed a God who answers prayer. So there I was, nineteen years old, more than seven years before I came into the reality of God myself; and not only did I witness a death to life miracle, but unbeknownst to me I was witness also to a young girl's first experience of real faith in Jesus. And the God of unfathomable goodness, in his infinite wisdom brought me together with this woman in a random camping trip so that I could know that he remembered my heart's desire to find out what happened to the little boy who drowned in front of me one evening in August of 1974; and was brought back to life by his loving kindness toward him and his praying big sister; not to mention a devastated mother. My friend, I've cried like a baby as I've written this testimony, with deep appreciation and gratitude for the grand privilege of being called into this "like precious faith" that God the Father, and his Son Jesus Christ have allowed me to be a partaker of these many years. "Oh how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men!" (Psm 31:19). Amen and amen!