Then the men snapped into action. Ted ran to his front door, screaming for his dog. When she didn't appear at once, Ted knew he had no time to search for her.
“Come on!” Roy screamed at him. “Run for your life!”
Ted dropped his hose on the ground and the two men began running. Ted prayed aloud as he raced.
“Lord, I put my house and everything in it into your hands.”
Then, still running as fast as he could, Ted remembered a passage from his discussion group earlier that day. The words of the apostle Peter in 1 Corinthians had stressed the importance of being thankful for everything, regardless of the outcome. Gulping back his fear, Ted added one more line to his prayer as he continued to run down his driveway toward his car.
“Lord, no matter what happens, I thank you for it and I praise you for who you are.”
Ted jumped into his Omni while Roy climbed into his own car; in seconds the two men were speeding away from the fire toward Roy's house half a mile away. There they picked up Roy's wife, warned another family in a nearby house, and continued their race for safety.
Because the lower roads were blocked by emergency vehicles, firefighters led the group of terrified homeowners to a parking lot on the beach across the highway. Ted stopped his car and stepped out. Other homeowners fleeing the mountainside did the same. They peered intently to ward where their homes lay, but all they could see was a fog of flames and smoke where the structures should have been.
For a moment Ted was nearly overcome by what he knew was happening behind the curtain of dense smoke. In a matter of seconds, the home he and his family had planned and dreamed about for twelve years, along with a lifetime of belongings and memorabilia, was being con sumed in an angry inferno.
He felt helpless, not sure whether he should scream or swear or cry. Around him others who had been evacuated from their homes were doing all of those things. But despite Ted's sorrow and helplessness, he was comforted by a su pernatural peace.
At that instant a Bible verse came to mind: all things work together for good to those who love God. Ted closed his eyes and forced himself to believe that promise. Then, in stead of cursing God or shouting out in anger, Ted raised his voice above the roar of the fire below and praised God for all his goodness. He was aware of the strange looks his neighbors were giving him, but he didn't care. With every thing disintegrating in flames before his eyes, he was deter mined that his faith would be the single thing that escaped destruction that afternoon.
For ten minutes the group of neighbors huddled in a cluster and watched as one home after another ignited in a burst of flames. The fire was moving closer, creeping along the highway and consuming utility poles as if they were matchsticks. Finally, firefighters told the group they would have to get back in their cars and head for shelter further down the highway.
As Ted walked back to his car, a young man wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans approached him.
“Hey, you in the white shirt!” he called, referring to Ted. Ted looked at him questioningly, pointing to himself and raising his eyebrows. “Me?”
The young man nodded and looked directly at Ted. “Yes. Don't worry. I got on your roof and watered it down for you.”
Nearby, Roy flashed Ted a look of doubt. There had not been enough time for anyone to climb on either of their roofs. By the time they left, the flames had been crashing into their yards like tidal waves. They had barely gotten away with their lives.
Ted shrugged in Roy's direction, convinced that the man must have confused him with someone else. Then he turned toward the young man once again. “Well, thanks. I sure appreciate that.”
The man nodded, and walked toward the fire officials as Ted climbed into his car and drove away.
With traffic caused by the fire, it took Ted more than an hour to wind his way down the highway to the place where evacuees were being directed. Then he collapsed into a chair and telephoned Barbara.
“Honey,” he said, releasing a deep sigh. “I have some bad news.”
He could think of nothing harder at that moment than telling his wife that her dream house had burned to the ground. But Barbara handled it with the same show of faith that had helped him make it through the day.
“Thank God you're all right,” was all she said. “I care more about you than the house.”
The fire continued to burn through the night, making it impossible for Ted to return to Malibu. Every hour or so he called the fire department seeking information about his house and asking whether it was safe to return, but no one knew the answers to his questions. Then, late that night, he remembered some friends who lived on the beach three miles across the valley. On a clear day they could see the Evans' house from their back window. He searched for their number and called them immediately.
“Listen, can you see my house? How bad is it? Just tell me straight. I need to know.”
His friend chuckled softly. “You won't believe it, Ted. We watched the whole thing through our binoculars. We saw the flames change direction and head right for your house. Our family formed a prayer circle and prayed for your safety and the safety of your house.” The man paused. “Ted, you won't believe this, but it's still standing. It looks absolutely untouched.”
It was impossible. His friend must have mistaken his house for another. Ted thought about the dry brush and wood that surrounded them there, and of the countless times he had wanted to clear a bigger area of land around their house. But there had never been enough time, be tween his work and the traveling they did to Mexico.
“Well, thanks.” Te d tried to sound optimistic. “I'll be back home as soon as they let me through, in case anyone asks about me.”
The next morning, just after dawn, it was finally safe to return. When he arrived home Ted was stunned by what he saw: his friend had been right.
The ferocious fire, flames towering higher than the treetops, had burned to within ten feet of his house and then abruptly stopped. All around his house the brush and wood that had cluttered his yard were destroyed, but the house and its contents were untouched. Ted felt as though he were seeing a vision of some kind and not reality, even as he made his way around the house.
The power lines that fed electricity into the house were melted and telephone lines were fused together. But just a few feet closer to the house, their expansive wooden deck was only lightly scorched. On it, their patio furniture was completely unharmed. Even the quaint wooden bridge that led to their home remained standing without any sign of damage.
Then Ted spotted something else that was utterly in congruous considering what had happened the day before. The hose that he had dropped on his deck when he'd been forced to run for safety was now draped up over the house and lying on the roof.
When Barbara got home later that day, they clung to each other and wept.
“I prayed God would send a hedge of protection. And that he'd put angels around our house.” Barbara smiled through her tears. “And that's exactly what he did.”
In all, there were seven houses along the narrow, hilly road where Barbara and Ted lived. Three were completely destroyed and three seriously damaged. Only the Evans' house stood untouched, in the middle of a house-sized piece of the hillside that alone remained unburned.
In the weeks and months that followed, Barbara spent a great deal of time wondering why her house had been spared. Research told her that the heat would have had to have been 1,800 degrees or hotter in order to melt the power lines. With temperatures that hot, the house should have burst into flames by spontaneous combustion from the heat alone. Yet not only was it unburned, it was also undamaged in every way.
Their neighbor friends were also amazed when they got a closer view of the Evans' house.
“To have seen Barbara's dream house standing amidst all the blackened ruins was to know without a doubt that God had posted angels on the spot,” the friend said later.
Indeed, Barbara learned that three witnesses had seen someone on the roof watering it
down after Ted and Roy fled the area. This made no logical sense: there was no lad der with which to climb on the roof, and no way water could have flowed from the Evans' well since power lines had been melted, thereby cutting off electricity to the elec tric water pump.
Barbara thought of Ted's story about the man who'd claimed to have watered down his roof, and wondered if maybe—just maybe—the man was an angel. Certainly God had heard their prayers and sent a circle of protection around Ted and the house. Wasn't it possible that the man on the roof was an angel?
Barbara thinks so to this day. “He was an angel,” she says. “An angel of mercy sent to save the greatest gift Te d had ever given me.”
The Miracle of Good-Bye
Miranda Thompson sat stiffly in the chair beside her mother's bed at the Clark County Nursing Home in Ridgefield, Washington, and watched a dozen birds fluttering outside the window.
“You know what they say about birds, don't you?” the sixty-seven-year-old Miranda asked softly, turning toward her own daughter, Katy, who had joined her that after noon.
“No, Mom, what do they say?”
“When birds gather outside the window of someone who's sick, it means the Lord is ready to call them home.”
Miranda held her mother's hand and stroked the wrinkled skin gently. Her mother, Esther, was eighty-six and in a coma. Doctors didn't expect her to live out the week.
“I love you, Mother,” Miranda said as tears threatened to spill onto her cheeks. Then she gazed up, closing her eyes as if to shut out the pain of death. Lord, help me accept this. Help me to let my mother go home to you.
They waited nearly an hour until it was time for din ner, and when the elderly woman showed no signs of re sponding, Miranda and Katy rose from their seats and slowly left the room.
“I'll be coming back tomorrow,” Miranda said as the two women walked out toward their cars in the parking lot.
“I'll be here too, Mom,” Katy said. “I'll meet you here after lunch.”
Miranda drove home in silence. The sadness she felt demanded quiet rather than the sounds of carefree music. Miranda sighed and thought about her mother's decline. Tw o years earlier the woman had been in good health, living independently in Seattle. Then she began struggling to manage on her own, and finally she had agreed to come live with Miranda and her husband, Bill, in the Ridgefield area.
“I don't want to be a bother,” she had told Miranda upon her arrival. “You just go about your business and I'll be fine.”
Esther stuck by her words and never imposed on the life Miranda and Bill led. Esther had a sweet disposition and a happy outlook contagious to those around her. Many afternoons she would sit outside watching Miranda work on her flower garden or making conversation with Bill.
Two years passed quickly, and it seemed Esther might live to be a hundred.
Then Miranda and Bill took a two-week vacation to Boston. During that time, the older woman began having a series of mini-strokes, and Miranda was finally called back home when her mother was admitted to the hospital and placed in intensive care.
Tw o days into her hospital stay, a nurse entered Esther's room and accidentally gave her the wrong medication. The drug slowed Esther's heart and brain activity and sent her into a deep coma. The doctor was honest with Miranda about what had happened.
“The nurse will be required to stay away from the hos pital for two weeks without pay and she will be admon ished,” he said gently. “Still, it was an accident and one that any of us might have made.”
“What does it mean for my mother?” Miranda asked anxiously. “When will she come out of the coma?”
The doctor sighed. “That's just it, Mrs. Thompson. Be cause of her condition and her age, she might not come out of it. I expect she might go downhill rather rapidly at this point.”
Miranda nodded, clutching Bill's hand and trying not to cry. “But if she comes out of it today or tomorrow, she still might make a recovery. Is that right?”
“I don't think it's likely, Mrs. Thompson. I'm trying to be as honest as possible.”
When her mother remained in the coma for four days, the hospital staff decided there was nothing more they could do for her. At that point Miranda made arrangements for her mother to be transferred to the Clark County Nursing Home.
“Mother, I hate to have you living away from us when you're feeling so sick,” she would say during her daily visits to the nursing home. “But the doctors and nurses can help you here much better than I can at home. I hope you un derstand, Mother. I love you.”
Eventually two weeks passed and now, as Miranda drove home, she felt terribly cheated. Her mother had been healthy, spry, and witty until this incident. She might have had years left if that nurse hadn't administered the wrong medication.
Miranda sighed aloud. She was doing her best to avoid blaming the nurse. “Lord, help me to understand why this has happened,” she prayed softly. “It doesn't seem fair that Mother should be cheated of her last years of life after she's been such an inspiration to me and touched so many peo ple.”
When Miranda got home it was nearly dusk, and Bill was still out golfing with his friends. She set her purse on the counter and thought how cold and lonely the house felt. Just three weeks earlier they'd had company over for dinner and her mother had been fine. Now she lay at death's doorstep, and Miranda struggled to make sense of the situation. How quickly and irrevocably life could change.
“I need to get outside before I work myself into a full blown depression,” Miranda said to herself. She found her gardening gloves and pulled them over her hands, intent on pruning the dead flowers from her beautiful garden that ran alongside the fence in the front yard.
She was working steadily among the flowers, still wrestling with the unfairness of her mother's situation, when she heard a man's voice nearby.
“My, your flowers are so lovely,” he said.
Miranda looked up and saw, standing on the sidewalk, a tall man holding the leash of a beautiful little dog. Mi randa smiled sadly. Her mother loved dogs and she cer tainly would have enjoyed this one. Miranda would have to tell her about it on her next visit.
“Thank you,” Miranda said, leaning back on her heels and looking up into the man's face. She had lived in the neighborhood for thirty-five years, but had never seen this person before. Miranda glanced back down at her flowers and frowned.
“They aren't as pretty as they could be if I had more time to take care of them,” she said. “My mother's sick. She's in a nursing home.”
The man gazed at Miranda kindly. There was some thing unearthly about him, a glow almost. He waited for Miranda to continue.
“She was given the wrong medication and now she's dying. I want to be there as much as possible.”
She looked at the man, and was embarrassed to feel tears welling up in her eyes again. This man was a stranger and here she was telling him all her problems.
“Don't worry about your mother,” the man said, his voice strong and gentle. “God is in control.”
Miranda wiped an errant strand of hair from her fore head and brushed the dirt off her gloves. How strange that someone she didn't know would offer such words of wis dom. The man continued to stand nearby, watching her closely.
“Sir, where do you live?” she finally asked.
The man said nothing, but only pointed upward. In stinctively, Miranda's eyes followed the direction he was pointing, and she looked toward the sky. When she looked back down, the man and his dog were gone. There was no sign of them anywhere along the street, and there was no way they could have vanished so quickly.
Miranda was shocked. She thought back over the con versation she had shared with the man, and she realized that she hadn't seen him arrive. He had just appeared with words of encouragement and then disappeared.
“God is in control,” he had said. Miranda pondered the truth in the man's words and found that as the evening passed she felt less burdened.
The next morning, Miranda
received a phone call from the nursing home. “Mrs. Thompson, you'll want to come down as quickly as possible,” the administrator said. “Your mother has died very peacefully in her sleep.”
Miranda shut her eyes as one hand flew to her mouth. Nothing could have prepared her for the truth, and she felt a sob catch in her throat. Then, before she could give in to the sorrow that threatened to consume her, Miranda re membered the man in the garden. A sense of peace came over her, and suddenly she knew her prayers had been answered. She told the administrator that she'd be down in a few minutes. Then she bowed her head.
“Dear God,” she whispered through her tears. “I un derstand now. There are no accidents where you're con cerned. Mother didn't die because of that nurse or the medication; she died because you were ready to bring her home. Just like the man said, you are in control. I under stand that better now, Lord. And I thank you.”
The Miracle of Life
Kendra Adams spent a decade battling to protect the rights of the unborn and often she would be asked a hypothetical question: “What if your baby was severely handicapped? Wouldn't you want the choice to abort?”
And always Kendra would smile patiently and shake her head. “Life comes from God. He has a reason for each and every one of us.”
Still, never in her wildest imagination did Kendra Adams ever think the issue would become personal. Then she married. She and her husband, Peter, a podiatrist, spent three years battling infertility and praying for a child.
When the Ann Arbor, Michigan, couple learned Kendra was expecting a baby, they rejoiced, thinking their troubles were over.
At first the pregnancy went along normally. But four months later, Kendra went in for routine testing and re ceived the first warning that something might be wrong.
“The good news is that you seem to be carrying twins, one boy, one girl,” the doctor explained. “But I'm con cerned about the little girl. She is too small for her gestational age and she doesn't seem to be developing properly.”