None Would Even Exist

Sitting on the deck last night with my 12-year-old grandson in one of those precious moments in life. He thinks differently than most kids his age and sometimes comes up with the most incredible perceptions. Sometimes I think people don't really appreciate the fact that he's becoming a pretty amazing "young man" or the rare giftings that he has. Well, we are talking and somehow the conversation turns to God and in one of the rare moments in my life I find myself telling him a story I have managed to tell only a few people in my entire lifetime:

When I was a young man (23?) God saved me from drowning when my car went into a ditch, flipped upside down and sank with me in it. The car was wedged between the 2 sides of the ditch and I couldn't get out.

So I'm telling him this story and he's asking questions like he does so I tell him that when I started to pass out I suddenly knew "I was going to die" and as I started to "go," for the first time in my life I began to be aware of God (really aware) and His presence. Everything I'd ever done, every thought and every motivation, as revealed by God began to be played out. And the horror of it was that I was found guilty before God. (Who I was convinced up until then didn't even exist.) It was utterly terrifying.

Then suddenly, there was this rush of indescribable power as I was "pulled" out of that car. Pulled through a space no bigger than my arm. I had a new breath of air in my lungs and I was alive and outside of the car as I burst through the surface of the water.

My two friends who were with me, who got out before the car sank, were a ways off sitting on a rock with their backs to the car. I had been down there too long.

So my grandson says to me, "So God saved you from death." and I answered him, "yep!" So then he said, realizing that I have 5 kids and 4 grandkids, him being one of them,

"Wow! If God hadn't saved you from death, then none of us would even exist!"

The thought rather startled me so all I could say was, "yep." Then we both sat there on the deck for a while soaking in that thought.

I honestly had never thought about that...

The Mercy and Foreknowledge of God.