September 14, Jinxed or Blessed?

September 14, 2019 I don’t usually start by putting the date, now I’ll tell you why.

At three o’clock in the morning on September 14 a long time ago, there was a massive car wreck on a mountain highway in West Virginia. A young evangelist, along with his wife and nine-month old baby were traveling to Ohio for a revival and as young people will do they overestimated their ability to drive all night without sleep. The car in which they were driving ended up squarely hitting the abutment of a bridge high over a mountain ravine. The baby who was bedded down in the foot of the backseat (before the days of car seats and seatbelts) was thrown by the impact through the front window and onto the hood of the shiny apple-red Pontiac. When the young preacher gained consciousness he was able to push against the door and stand out in the drizzling rain, seeing his baby on the hood of the car he picked her up and patted her back to try and comfort her and realized that her clothes were soaked in blood. Looking inside the car he saw his young wife under the dash, her face a mangled mess. The next day it was reported in the Loganville paper that three people had been killed in a car wreck on the mountain highway early in the morning September 14.

Fast forward to September 14, 1964 and see a young couple rejoicing over the birth of a beautiful baby boy, black hair, brown eyes and the soul of a saint. At the age of eight he watched a family on a local television channel and decided that when he was old enough to drive he was going to go to that family’s church in Atlanta, Georgia. By the time he was driving, that family had moved the church to Marietta, just a few short miles from where he lived! He started going to that church, joined the choir, the drama department, was involved in all the activities and fell in love with the granddaughter of the Pastor he had watched on television years before, and a few years later married her!

On September 14, two weeks after that young man had married the preacher’s granddaughter, her ten year-old brother’s appendix, which had burst two days before, gangrened and he was in the hospital dying, it took ten days in the St. Frances Hospital in Columbus, Georgia before he was able to go home, God saved his life that day.

On September 14 two years ago, that now adult boy’s wife was driving on the Connector when she was so overcome by pain she had to pull off the road and wait for her husband to come rescue her. She thought she was having another miscarriage, which would have been devastating. It turns out she was having an appendicitis attack and had to have emergency surgery. The twins she was carrying are now 16 months old so they made it through that trauma just fine!

This morning, September 14, 2019 we found out that a girl we have taken into our home as one of our own learned her grandmother has stage four cancer and will be started on hospice care immediately.

Today on this September 14 the baby thrown through the windshield is helping to celebrate the birthday of the little boy who grew up and married my daughter and the ten year-old, my son who survived the nearly fatal bout with a burst appendix, grew up to be a valuable Doctor of Chiropractic with his own practice and fabulous musician helping to lead worship at the Ararat Church 4336 King Springs Road, Smyrna, Georgia and his beautiful wife and twin sons are testaments that God saved their lives on September 14, 2017.

Do I think this date is jinxed? No, I think that God has shown us His love and mercy and I am looking forward to tomorrow when I will worship God with my family and thank Him for His goodness, His mercy and His everlasting kindness, which endures to all generations! Amen and Amen!