IF IT IS GOD'S WILL

The second time God spoke to me through Scripture in my teenage years came just a few days after the first time. 

I am certain I have written about the first here before, but because the first and second were closely connected, I will recap it here:

It was the end of my junior year of high school and my Sunday school teachers had challenged us to read a chapter a day in our Bibles. 

I had read a good portion of the New Testament by the time Memorial Day weekend rolled around and a car accident took the life of my friend and classmate, Phil. 

God first spoke to me an answer to the most heartfelt prayer of my life which I cried through the day I heard the news: Give me a sign that I will see Phil again someday.

It wasn't so much a question of whether heaven existed. I was asking God to prove that He Himself existed.

After a weeklong hiatus from Scripture reading to process the accident and then the funeral, I picked up where I left off in the Bible: I was ready to begin Hebrews 11.

When I read verse 1, I knew it was an answer to my prayer:

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen."

The second verse that hit me right between the spiritual eyes came just a few days later. I had moved on to the book of James. There, I read the following:

'Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.'

There's so much truth in those few verses - and it all reinforced what I had just learned the hard way.

I suppose this has come to mind now because of Hannah's car accident last night. Today was quite normal around my house but I am well aware that it could have been a drastically different day.

A nightmarish day.

I was 17 when Phil passed away. He had driven past my house just an hour or so before he hit a pothole and lost control of his speeding car on a country road.

After the funeral, I had tried to remember what had been said in our short conversation but I could only remember how I had ended it:

"See you later."

To this day, at 55, I try to avoid that phrase. 

And if I do hear it come out of my mouth, I add a silent "If it is God's will".