A Family Mystery

Week of March 22

It is one of those unexplained things in our family. Grandfather had come from his house on the Rhode Island shore to spend the better part of the week helping my dad replace the front porch steps on our home in the city.. On the second day my grandfather announced he had to go home. My dad protested but ‘Papa’ was firm.

Papa didn’t know why, he just knew he had to get back to his wife, who was blind, and their adult daughter. My father reluctantly drove Papa to the bus station.

The next afternoon I stood on the unfinished porch with my dad watching the rain and wind blow by the house. At five and a half years old I was holding onto the porch railing and my dad was holding onto me. Suddenly, without making a sound, a tree in the lot across the street toppled over. It didn’t snap or crack it just blew over and was uprooted. Then another tree fell. My dad had seen enough and took me inside.

Dad gathered our family on the inside wall of the dining room, away from the windows while he stood in the opposite corner by the telephone. He called the fire department to discuss the large elm next to our house. While he was talking, we heard a thump and saw the massive tree fall past the window. A branch had grazed the house but the main part of the tree fell harmlessly onto our driveway.

We didn’t know it then but we were witnessing the destructive hurricane of 1938 that would claim 682 lives from Long Island, Providence and the Southern New England coastline. There was no radar in those days and there had been no warning of the approaching danger.

For two days after the hurricane my dad tried to reach Papa. No luck, the phone lines were down. Finally, on the third day my dad decided to drive. He told us later he didn’t realize how catastrophic this hurricane had been until he approached the ocean. Where there had been a row of homes there was now empty space. The road was obliterated in places by sand and he had to detour around large boats and wharfs left stranded in the middle of the roadway.

He finally arrived in Tiverton only to find that the Old Stone Bridge to Island Park, where Papa lived was gone. Dad hitched a ride over by boat.

When he reached the island he found everything in shambles. Many of the buildings he was familiar with were gone or reduced to rubble and my dad was disoriented and in shock. There was so much devastation. A metal street sign still in place told him he was at Papa’s road. All the cottages on the street were crushed or gone, except one. There was Papa’s house still standing with minimal damage.

Papa said when he awoke the morning of the storm he saw the ominous clouds, and boarded up his house, including the cellar windows preventing water from flooding the house. Papa, gramdma and my aunt rode out the ferocious storm in that single story house that Papa had built himself years earlier.

What had produced that overwhelming urge for my grandfather to return home? Papa never tried to explain it. When asked how he knew he had to return home he would just shrug his shoulders.

“Something was telling me I had to go home,” was all that he would say.

He had heeded the message. And it is well he did. Like my Papa, today I pay attention to any strong inner messages. I know the source.

“Whoever listens to me will dwell safely, and will be secure without fear of evil.” (Proverbs 1:33)

Jody Estes
Providence, Rhode Island

Seeking Employment

Week of March 14

Approximately twenty years ago I was working as a secretary in a steamship company in New Orleans. I had been there a couple of years but because I had studied to be a legal secretary, I was ready to get a job with a law firm. I started to seek God’s guidance to help me find a job where I could utilize my legal training. During lunch hour, I would take my Bible and head behind the office building where there were benches and fountains.

While I was out there I would often see homeless people and panhandlers. There was one man in particular that was there every day. Eventually, he came to me and asked what I was reading and I told him. He asked if I was a Jesus freak and I said yes I am. He said I made him feel uncomfortable when he was trying to ask people for money. I told him I had no condemnation for him, but that I thought he seemed able bodied enough to work. I also shared my desire to get a job with a law firm.

We became speaking friends and one day he said, “Since you know God so well, why don’t you pray that I get a job.” At that moment I put my hand on his shoulder and started praying out loud. “Not here, not now,” he protested. I just kept praying. That was on a Thursday. On Monday he came running up to me at lunch. He was clean and groomed and I hardly recognized him. An attorney who he had been asking for money had hired him. I was happy for him but I was jealous.

I said (silently of course) God, I am the one who wanted a job with a law firm, have you mixed things up here or what? I was sure God knew what he was doing and I thanked him for giving this man a job.

About a week later, the man came to me and said, “I have an interview for you at the law firm. The senior partner needs a secretary.” I thought this would take an act of faith for me to go on an interview at the recommendation of this man. Were they just humoring him? Those thoughts vanished immediately because I knew no matter what; I would do nothing to cause him to waiver in his belief in answered prayers. I was not going to let pride prevent me from going and thereby show a lack of faith.

I thanked God for the opportunity, went on the interview and I was hired on the spot. The attorneys still tell people that the best employment recommendation they ever had was from a homeless man. I quickly remind them that God alone was the employment agency. God will answer your prayer when you step out in faith. God also has a wonderful sense of humor.

Carolyn Bourgeois
New Orleans, Louisiana

Jack's Miracle

Week of March 8

Good Friday Jack was working out at the gym, as he often did. Without warning he collapsed on a weight machine and slid to the floor. A cardiac nurse happened to be working out nearby. She normally would not have been at the gym at that hour but a schedule change at work allowed her to be a the gym. She had the presence to remove vomit from Jack’s mouth which cleared his air passage. Jack, unconscious but breathing on his own was rushed to a nearby hospital.

In the emergency room Jack remained unconscious, a couple of times the doctors lost a pulse. He remained in a coma. The doctor told his wife that a cat scan showed no activity. They said if he regained consciousness he probably would be a vegetable. Jack’s youngest daughter, Colleen, a high school student, told her mom not to believe the doctor.

“Our God is bigger than that,” she said. Later after the rest of the family arrived Colleen found her way to the Chapel. She was alone. She prayed for God’s healing power. She said she clearly her a voice in her head say, “I will restore those (brain) cells Sunday to glorify my son’s resurrection.”

When she reported this revelation to her family she was met with skepticism, heads shaking in disbelief, and eyes rolling. The next day Jack was still in a
comma and on life support. Twice Colleen, in talking to her dad, got such a strong reaction on the monitoring machine that the nurses came in the room. The second time she was asked by the nurses to leave the hospital room. She insisted her dad was going to be ok. “You don’t know my God or my dad,” she told the nurses as she left.

The next day, Easter morning, there was a banging at her bedroom door. It was her little brother reporting that, “Dad woke up.”

An excited Colleen, while driving to the hospital stopped at every convenience store she passed to exclaim “Behold the Lamb of God, my dad is healed.” She arrived at the hospital to find her dad sitting up and being his old feisty self.


Jack Reilly
Tucson, Arizona (As told by his daughter)