Blessings from Tragedy Part 1
I shudder to think what life would be like without God. After our wreck we saw a glimpse of how good the Lord can be. We were, and are truly blessed to be Christians and to have so many loving a caring brethren.
Romans 8:28 (KJV) says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” This doesn’t mean that everything that happens to you is going to be good, but that the end result is going to be good. There are blessings that we don’t even know exist until the time comes. When considering the wreck; how could that be good? It wasn’t hard to see when the blessings started coming. I want to share some of those blessings with you right now.
The wreck itself had blessings. We are so thankful that nobody had any life-threatening injuries, but furthermore when we landed, we landed right-side up. We could have been upside down. We could have been laying on our side, but we landed in a way we could all easily unbuckle to get out of the car quickly. Along with this, so many have asked if we were mad at the trucker for causing the wreck. In short we were, but we were more thankful that he pulled around us and slowed traffic. This helped us in that nobody would came plowing into the back of us while we sat helplessly in the road.
Furthermore, we had several people who called 911 immediately. Emergency services couldn’t have made it any quicker. Not only this, but two different people stopped and helped make sure we were ok (coincidentally, one was a distant relative of our friend Jeff Miller).
Another blessing is that we were in Springfield, MO when this happened. We were on our way to drop the kids off at their grandparents just 45 minutes away. This meant that by the time we got to the hospital we didn’t have to wait long before family came.
This trip was supposed to be vacation (our kids with grandparents, and us with each other) and I had arranged to be gone the entire week. I’m certainly glad this was the case, because I now had no way of getting home. This wasn’t a problem for the Lord. He already had it under control. My elders at the time (the Ceredo church of Christ, WV) were glad to get us a rental to get us home, unfortunately we were not in the shape to drive just yet (Autumn had a broken rib and I had a concussion that had somehow gone undiagnosed). We were so thankful for their generosity.
As all of this was going on, my father-in-law, Tim Kidwell, had posted our wreck on Facebook. People began to ask the Branson Church of Christ elders if they could help us financially. The elders agreed to the request and set up a social media post telling brethren to send money to them and they would oversee the receiving of funds. The response was so great that after a few days the elders posted that people should stop sending money as surely all financial issues would be taken care of.
Brethren from several different states contributed to our plight making it possible to take care of our financial responsibilities, as well as replace some of the items we lost in the wreck. I remember how humbling it was. I remember the feeling of standing next to our wrecked Suburban thinking, we are ok, but how are we going to get home. What are we going to do? The Lord didn’t need me to worry about that, He had it under control (1 Pet. 5:7; Prov. 19:21; Psa. 16:2)
Psalm 37:25 reads, “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” We all have been blessed richly, but the blessing of knowing that the Lord will take care of you is even greater than any material blessing. Put your faith in God. You won’t be disappointed.
His servant and yours,
Matt McBrayer