[Preface note: My “one word” for 2014 is “aware.” And the first thing I want to grow more aware of is God’s presence in my everyday…]

I was all alone in the house. And it was late and dark and freakishly cold, and the wind was howling wild around the house corners and making moan and clank and bump and bang, and the chill so bad the weather bureau was sounding dire warnings about any time out in it being life threatening.

And when I placed the skillet on the gas burner and turned the knob, the sound was odd and a little pop came, so I flicked it off and tried again…

Then the yellow flame all around,

and then the LOUD “POP!”

and all the lights blanked out but those dim beams on the opposite end of the kitchen, on a different breaker.

Needless to say, I turned the knob to “off” and left it there. A little rattled, a little timid, I fished the “miscellaneous drawer” for a flashlight and headed to the basement stairs to find the tripped breaker and click it back on.

But was everything okay in the kitchen now?

I went back and investigated. I sniffed around and smelled no gas fumes (though I did detect a funny burnt-plastic odor.) I lifted parts from the burner and saw all the black.

What had caused this I couldn’t guess. All I could do was keep thanking God it had ended where it had.

If the house had caught fire…

if I’d had to get out, and get to a neighbor’s…

could I have grabbed enough body and head and hand coverage on the way?

could I have made it to any neighbor on foot in less than fifteen minutes in this wind and blowing snow? (Our houses aren’t close.)

(And, now in further retrospect I wonder: would I have thought to snatch the keys from their hook and go pull open the garage door and see if the car would even start… because even in my right-after-the-fact thinking, this never occurred to me.  So it’s likely I’d have run out the door without them.)

And would any neighbors have heard me pounding on their door, or would they think it was more wind antics?

The intervening hand of God? Who can say that definitely? The breaker blowing may have resulted from some built-in safety feature… I don’t know. I don’t even know why the whole thing happened. Nor does the husband I was doubly glad to see come shuddering, hunched up through the back door later.)

But this I do know. There have been closer calls and nearer misses for both of us. From childhood right up to our recent years. (I could write a series on them.) Amazing uncanny deliverances.

So I choose to class this among them.

And to consider how the adventure of last night heightened my awareness of this other thing I know:

God is with me. Sometimes, like Sunday, His presence is evident in the palpable stillness and uncanny “coincidences.” Most of the time not so clearly. But always there, always with me, wherever I might be, in whatever state.

And I must still be here on earth for some reason, I think, as I review all the close brushes with death.

He has made me… aware.

 

When, before Him, we prayerfully choose a theme word for a year (or it “chooses” us?), He takes us up on it. And  no matter what the word, He usually has His ways of making us repeatedly aware of it!

 

Did you pick a “One Word” for 2014?

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