Fresh Eyes

OPEN EYES TO HIS PROTECTION

“Thanks for coming” I said with cheerful appreciation as the two visitors exited. It was my turn to sit the community art museum and although I felt privileged to display my own artwork there, sometimes the long intervals between visitors made for a boring three-hour shift. Thankfully, there had been several visitors during that day and another entered as they left. So why did I suddenly feel so fearful the minute this particular young man came in? I greeted him pleasantly and he immediately attempted a conversation with me. Feeling wary, I kept my usual extroverted personality at bay. Despite his continued verbal perseverance, I remained at the front desk rather than lead him through the exhibit in my typical docent manner. This is silly, I told myself. He looks neat and clean and is very polite, why do I feel so afraid? My insides, however, began shaking and I took further inventory of this stranger. I noticed his backpack and pondered a comment he’d made about many people being homeless after the earthquake. I tried to do some reading, but couldn’t concentrate, as the fear grew even stronger. Lord, I prayed silently, calm and protect me. Quiet reassurance whispered back with an instant recollection of a recent, yet puzzling flashback experience.

We’ve all heard about people having their life flash before them during an extreme moment of danger. Well, I wouldn’t call bending over tying my shoes even close to extreme danger. However, it was during this very mundane morning ritual about two weeks prior to the gallery sitting, when an amazing visual flashback happened to me. Now, it wasn’t a complete picture of my whole life, but it was like a mental video playing numerous times when my life had been in grave danger. I remembered how I sat stunned at this visual playback wondering what it meant. Was I about to be in some terrible accident or other kind of danger? I figured if that was the meaning, whatever it was would happen that day or the next, but it had been about two weeks and nothing transpired. Now, here I was feeling a sense of danger for some yet unknown reason.

I recalled my flashback. It had been a collection of unpleasant memories that had never before teamed together in my mind. I began to think it was God’s way of showing me how He had protected me all my life. It started with the time I fell out of a moving car at the age of about 3. I vividly remembered every detail of the event …I can still remember the roughness of the street scraping against my cheeks for what felt like several minutes. My mother told me years later, that when she got out of the car and saw me lying there, my head was just inches from the rear wheel.

The next life-threatening memory was of a trip back East in a homemade camper. The open windows of it may have kept my younger brother and I cool enough, but they also sucked carbon monoxide poison from the exhaust right into the camper shell. I can still clearly remember my last thoughts and actions before losing consciousness. …

After that, came the vision of nearly breaking my neck on a trampoline at the age of 11.

Just as another event came to mind, the young man in the museum startled me back into the present with some more chit-chat about looking for work. Again, I did not let him pull me into conversation, just mumbled a general “uh huh”.

The memories continued to play across my mind as I thought about another dangerous and unusual incident. I was 17 and visiting relatives at my grandparents’ lakeside cabin in Georgia. My brothers, cousins, and I were enjoying ourselves on the lake in two rowboats when we heard the deafening, yet all too common sound of a jet taking off. At that time there was a small Air Force base on an island nearby and the noise was an extreme disturbance to the peacefulness of this quiet retreat. Then a very loud explosion shattered the serenity further and we saw pieces of metal flying through the air, embedding into trees, and slicing into the water just a few feet from our boats. …

There were several more incidents brought to recollection during that closet vision, but the last one seemed to hold the key to why the Lord had given me this forewarning. It was the disturbing memory of a young man who had attacked me by sneaking up behind and hitting me over the head with a rock. …

I snapped back into focus to my current predicament with a fuller realization of my Lord’s protection in times of danger. Yet, my insides felt like a 6.0 on the Richter scale and my anxiety did not stop. I prayed again. A very clear thought came to mind: If the guy in the museum is there with evil intent on his mind, he will try to lure me to the back of the room. Less than minute later, he came over to me and said …

Not many experience this kind of visionary premonition of God’s protective hand. It may even seem that I have had an unusual number of rare predicaments, some of which I did not mention. That may be, but I believe that all of us would be surprised to see how many times the Lord has protected us from dangers. The word says, “Your adversary the devil walks about seeking whom he will devour.” (1 Peter 5: 8). We all need to be “sober and vigilant” not only in our spiritual walk, but in our daily activities. We live in a fallen world and we never know when or where the evil one may attempt to sabotage our journey. …