[An excerpt from The Making of a Model, the book I have been writing for the last four years, now submitted for publication and slated to be available within the next three months].
As my father stepped from his second-floor office in our home one morning in 1949, he could scarcely believe what he was seeing on the floor twelve feet below. Lying face down, bleeding from the left ear, and unconscious, he saw what was left of me following a fall that came perilously close to ending my life.
The stairway that led to the ground floor of our home was sided by a winding, smooth banister that no self-respecting ten-year-old could ignore. The trick was to slide down the banister and reach the first floor in record time. This time I missed! How I survived I do not know but, surprisingly, my injuries were minimal. Despite a broken collarbone and reduced hearing in my left ear, I recovered completely within just a few months.
And now, the rest of the story.
My parents were missionaries, and, at the time of this incident, we were living in Cusco, Peru. A week or so later, my father received a letter from a lady in the United States he had, to the best of his knowledge, never met. “Could it be,” she wrote, “that you had a particularly bad day on Wednesday? As I was working around my home, I felt a special burden to pray for you. I stopped what I was doing, prayed for you and your family until the burden lifted, and I write to let you know of my experience and ask how you and your family are doing.”
My father wrote back, thanking her for her faithfulness, and never heard from her again. But that was the very day our family was in desperate need of divine intervention.
Some will say that my experience was just a fortunate coincidence. It is amazing, however, how often such coincidences follow a request made to our Heavenly Father. God answers prayer. Our Father is a Master Strategist, and He has an uncanny way of controlling events whereby all the pieces fall into place at just the right time!
Skeptics may call it circumstantial; we call it God.
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