I have a dear friend who is writing a book about these. I’d like to ask for your stories and contact info to be sent to my email torreymoe@gmail.com.
I will present what I collect to my friend and then let him reach out to you when he has time if he’d like to include your stories in his book.

The picture is of my friend who plans to write this book. You may know him. I’ll blog more about him soon. Look at this man. I love him. He’s a dear friend and example of quiet, faithful seeking of God. Like those solar panels he’s working on, he too absorbs. He absorbs the goodness and greatness of God. He absorbs the pain of those he listens so patiently to. He worships God with abandon and seeks care as he knows he is in need of it from God’s people. Then he gets back to being the gentle and comforting friend I’ve always known him to be. I’m so grateful for you, Tom.

Isn’t it amazing that God works miracles still today? What’s sobering is that He doesn’t do miracles in the “signs and wonders” sense so often as He works even more beautiful miracles of “changed lives”. For me, these changed lives are the most awe-inspiring miracles. For us, these are what we too easily view as “ordinary” and the signs and wonders are what we can’t wait to see.

I have a wonder I can share about, but then I’ll share about what I’m far more amazed by in my own life. When I was six years old, I had a brain surgery. Seriously! I was riding down the hill by the house I now get to call home, the old Moe Homestead. I was only six, so my riding was a little jerky. The hill was covered in tall grass, so I didn’t see a big irrigation pipe laying there. I hit it and the uncapped end of my little BMX bike popped a nice hole into the front of my forehead. Ouch! I bled pretty bad, but the comical moment was me thinking my eye had been popped out. I flipped out for a while and got all sick to my stomach thinking I’d lost my eye. Once my cousin told me I still had my eye, I just stood there letting the blood drip, thinking as a little boy that it was kind of cool, seeing the red dots on the dirt like that.

Well my uncle came down and rushed me up to what I now get to call my kitchen sink and rinsed me off. He ran me to the ER where they promptly stitched me up and sent me home. Turns out I’d cracked my skull to pieces and needed literal brain surgery! I got real sick and my parents realized something was severely wrong, so they rushed me to the hospital and they ended up sending me to Modesto Children’s Hospital for surgery. By God’s grace I ended up turning out okay… I think. And, the exciting part for me is that I got a new little puppy I named “Puppy”. Truly my very favorite dog still to this day.

The true miracle in my mind is that God has done a work in my heart, mind, and soul to draw me to Himself in love through Jesus Christ. Many will stop reading at this point. Isn’t that a sorrow? This is the thing. We’ve each been impaled by the sin of our parents, handed the seed of sin since Adam and Eve. We’ve been in need of the Major Surgeon to step in and heal us, to mend our heads and our hearts, to give us hope and life. What do we want instead? We want the puppy. We want the stuff of this world, when God offers us HIMSELF and His healing of our sinful, broken persons.

Father, please teach us of how supernatural Your transforming of our lives truly is. Please help us to grow in the area of compassion for our friends around us. This Gospel brings us to Heaven, but we have to want to know the Person of Heaven more than the place. Christ is our Rescue, our Surgeon of the heart and soul. Thank You for sending Him to this ground. Thank You for grounding Your Son to this place of sorrows and pain and sin. Thank You for penetrating our lives, making us aware of our need for saving, and showing us the One Who can “make it all better” as little kids like to say. This world is still dark, but thank YOU for being our Light, our Hope, our Newness, our Mercy, our Joy for eternity.