How many of us have walked through the valley of the shadow of death? Most, if not all of us have, from time to time. We live our lives from day to day, sometimes with death only a flicker away. An instant one way or another sometimes makes the difference. Why is it that some survive and others perish? A whim of fate? Luck of the draw? Random chance? I think not. We all have our allotted time here on earth. We do not choose our time of coming into this earth, nor should we take it into our own hands to choose our time of leaving. That is for God alone to decide.
We can all perhaps look back over our lives and identify specific instances where we cheated death, or more properly put, where we were given extended life. I believe that there is a reason that those events and times did not take us. I believe it is divine intervention.
I look at my life, the past 66 years or so, and see with the eyes of a Christian those events which before, I cast to luck or fate, but now see for what they were. The Lord did not want me to leave just yet. He had something in store for me, a role to play, something to accomplish. I still don’t know exactly what that is, but I trust the fact that He will let me know in His own time. And then again, maybe He won’t let me know. Maybe I’ll find out when I stand with Him in Heaven and can see the plan and role I played in the greater scope of things.
When I was barely a year old, my mother had taken me to visit her parents in Missouri. I became ill with a cold, perhaps the flu. It turned into pneumonia. It happens fast with children sometimes. My temperature soared to dangerous limits. I was placed in ice water in the tub to try and bring the temperature down. My father, who was in Atlanta, was called and given the news that I might not make it through the night. In a time before interstate highways, he drove to Missouri like a madman. He made it in record time, according to him. At the speeds he drove, how he stayed on some of those mountain roads without flying off into space can only be attributed to the divine hand of God. He drove through the night and arrived the next morning in time to see my fever break and for me to continue my young life. In those times, the late 40’s, many children didn’t survive an illness such as mine. Why me? Good doctors? Good care? Love? Yes to all of the above, with the caveat that His hand was on me and those around me.
When I was no more than two, I had my next brush with death. I was playing in the front yard on Bank Street in Smyrna with my dog, Old Moe. Mom was there working on her flowers. The telephone rings and mom runs into the house for a moment to answer it. She was gone for only a moment or two. When she came back outside I was gone. She was frantic. Imagine the feelings she must have had – fear, guilt, and pain. In minutes the neighborhood was mobilized and searching for me. I was nowhere to be found. My aunt Colene and uncle Dallis lived down and across the street, and the thought was that perhaps I had wandered over there. A search around their house turned up nothing. There were heavy woods behind the house with a creek at the bottom of the hill. Everyone rushed through the woods and down the hill and up and down the creek looking for me. Not there. Finally someone remembered the old abandoned house and pool on further across the creek and up the next hill. Everyone ran there hoping that I had not made it to the pool. The pool was full of black brackish water with leaves, limbs, frogs and other unmentionable things. When they arrived at the pool, there I was sitting beside the pool with Old Moe. We were both soaked from being in the pool. There is no question that I fell in the pool, and being unable to swim at that age, had been rescued by Old Moe. This was no Lassie movie. This was the real McCoy. The Lord had given Old Moe to protect and look after me. A miracle? Call it what you will, but my dog saved my life. A dog that wouldn’t fetch a stick or ball if you threw it. A dog who knew no tricks. A dog who happened to love me and through the grace of God was there to pull me from that foul water.
The same dog, a few years later in our front yard, fought and ran off another dog with rabies – a mad dog. It cost him his life. He kept the mad dog from harming one of us. Then the police came and shot him in our basement where we had put him for quarantine. I always cried, and still do to this day, when I watch the movie “Old Yellar,” especially the part where the boy shoots his dog who has gone mad.
When I was probably five or six, I ran out in front of a car and was unceremoniously propelled through the air many feet before landing on the pavement in a crumpled heap. Unconscious, I was rushed to the hospital where miraculously I woke up asking what happened, none the worse for wear other than being black and blue and a little scrubbed up. How is it that I was not killed? I think I know.
I have always had this thing about trees. I not only love to look at them, but I love to climb them. As a child, I could hardly pass up what I called “climbing trees.” You know what a climbing tree is – one that has limbs near the ground, easily accessible to a kid, and evenly spaced stepping and climbing limbs up the trunk. I used to love shinnying up the tall narrow trunked poplar trees that abounded in the woods behind my home on Bank Street. I would get as high up as I could go, and then start swaying back and forth, getting the tree to bend back and forth with the full intent of “topping” it, as I called getting the tree top to bend over far enough so that I could either touch the ground and let go, or easily drop to the ground with no damage. I remember clearly the last tree I “topped,” and I do mean “topped.” Mid-way in the course of one of my “sways,” the narrow trunk of the particular poplar I had chosen, snapped cleanly in two. I plummeted roughly to the ground, still clutching the newly free top of the tree. Luckily for me, I landed flat on my back on the mulchy forest floor. The wind was knocked from me and I think I may have even lost consciousness for a moment, but perhaps just glimpsed a few stars. The floor of the woods were covered with various dead fall trees, rocks, uneven terrain, numerous things that could have been far more unpleasant to land upon. Why didn’t I break my back or neck and die there on the ground, or at least be paralyzed? I think I know.
There was another favorite tree of my childhood, in the backyard next to the sandbox. I climbed that tree numerous times growing up. One night I had a dream that I climbed that tree and hung by my knees from a branch, just like the man on the flying trapeze does in the circus. In my dream, the limb broke and I plunged to the ground landing on the top of my head. Lo and behold, the next day I climbed that tree and proceeded to make my dream come true. Sure enough, I hung by my knees, and sure enough, the limb broke and I did, indeed, land on the top of my head. I landed in the sandbox, which cushioned the fall somewhat, but why didn’t I break my neck? I think I know.
In that same backyard of my youth, my mother had a clothes line strung between two trees where she hung her laundry out to dry – these were the days prior to electric clothes dryers. One evening, just about dusk, that time which is not totally light or dark, I was playing hide and seek with my sister, Cynthia. I was running full speed across the backyard to find a hiding place. I never saw it coming. I caught that clothes line right in the Adam’s apple below the chin, my feet swung neatly up in front of me, my body hovering there weightless for a moment, before crashing to earth on my back. The pain was excruciating, and I was unable to talk or cry out. I could not breath. I knew I was going to die. I had surely snapped my wind-pipe and I was going to lay there and slowly die of asphyxiation. As I lay there, I saw out of the corner of my eye, my sister, Cynthia, dash past me, full intent upon catching up with me in the direction she knew I had last headed out in. I couldn’t even reach up my arm to flag her down and certainly couldn’t call out to her. She did not see me, and a tear leaked from my eye as I saw her rush away, knowing full well that I was a few short minutes from death, alone on the ground in my backyard. Obviously, I did not die. Five or ten minutes later, an eternity really, I was finally able to pull myself up and slowly stumble to the house where it was some time before I could talk well enough to tell my Mom what had happened. Why didn’t my wind-pipe get severed? I think I know.
Another time, I was standing in the driveway in front of the carport of our house on Bank Street in Smyrna. As I stood there, I heard a “thunk” beside me on the concrete drive. I looked down at my feet, and there, a few inches from my right foot I saw a gray object about the size of a marble. I reached down and picked it up. As I rolled the small, surprisingly heavy lump around in my hand, it slowly dawned on me what it was. Closer inspection identified a flattened bullet. It splatted on the concrete mere inches from coming down into the top of my head, which surely would have killed me, or at the very least caused serious damage. At the time it didn’t really dawn on me how close I came to death or injury. It was only later, as I got older that I realized what a close call I had. How come it didn’t zap me? I think I know.
All of our childhood’s are filled with instances, if not exactly like these, at least with similar tales of tragedy narrowly averted. But childhood is not where those sort of things end.
I remember one winter night when I was sixteen years old, an ice storm had come blowing in while I was out on a date with my girlfriend, Ellen, driving my fathers 1959 pink Cadillac. Oh yes, I was cool. We were headed North on Atlanta Road toward the old Smyrna downtown, when I hit a patch of black ice and started to spin. The car was totally out of control. My turns of the steering wheel amounted to nothing. I was slowly and gracefully doing 360 degree turns down the middle of the road. On-coming traffic was headed toward us, when at the last moment the tires left the black ice and the car screeched to a halt sideways across the road, tilting up and almost over, until finally, the two tires in the air came back to earth and the car bounced up and down a little. This all happened in a matter of a few heartbeats. I immediately pulled the car back into my lane and drove on as if nothing had happened. I remember saying to Ellen, with false bravado, “Would you like to see that again?” She declined. We could have left the road and crashed into a tree, or been hit by the oncoming traffic, but we didn’t. I think I know why. And it wasn’t just because Cadillac makes a heavy car.
In 1962-64, I was predisposed with this unhealthy obsession of climbing water towers and painting various slogans, usually, CHS ’64. This one particular night, after much beer was consumed, a group of us headed up S. Cobb Drive toward Marietta and a water tank I had been admiring for some time. It was time to get the Mark Reed treatment. I just happened to have a can of red spray paint in my trunk. I was first up the ladder and upon arriving at the little catwalk that surrounded the tank, I proceed to leave my messaage in red. Heck, the beer had even emboldened me so as to paint my name on the side of the tank in big red letters. Duh. Anyway, my buddies had stayed on the ground yelling endearments up to me. As I started to climb down, I realized that one of my buds had climbed up up also, but was stopped and not moving, probably 100’ or so off the ground. I told him to climb down. He answered me in a shaking voice that he could not move. He was frozen with fear. What to do? I climbed down over him, and stopped behind him, and slowly helped him remove one hand at a time, and take one step at a time, and eventually we made it down. Thinking back on it, if he had let go, we both would have plumetted to our likely deaths. But he didn’t. We made it. I think I know why. By the way, the next morning, I realized that I had painted my name on the tower. I was going to be dead meat. I drove over, and there in big bold letters on the side of the tank was the name “Mark Red.” The beer saved me. The talk around town by police was all about the cryptic message left on the tower. Who was Mark Red? What did it mean? Was this the sign of some gang? Jeepers.
I used to date a girl in college whose family lived on Hilton Head Island. My Dad owned an airplane, a single engine, four passenger, Piper Comanchee. In the summer of 1965, Dad and Mom flew me down to Hilton Head to spend a week with my girlfriend and her family. On the flight down, I sat next to Dad in the front co-pilot seat to his right. He would let me take the controls and “fly” some, which was a blast. Mom sat in the back seat. Somewhere along the way, over the heavily wooded pine forests of South Georgia, it happened. Here we were, cruising along, the drone of the engines fairly loud, so much so that you had to speak loudly so as to be heard – and then there was this uneven sound in the engines. There was a chug chug of sorts as the engine missed a few beats, and then the engine stopped altogether. Except for the sound of the air rushing past the airplane, there was an unearthly silence. I don’t recommend it, and that comes from a man who has since flown in a glider. Mom was immediately frantic asking what was wrong, and I must admit to having a real sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, full realization hitting me that we might crash. Dad, natural born pilot that he was, never missed a beat, calmly telling us that the fuel tank had run dry, as he reached over and switched tanks and started flipping switches, turned a knob or two and hit the starter. The engine and the prop started to slowly turn over and finally caught and fired up again. What a relief! The rest of the flight was uneventful except for the approach over the marsh, ocean and beach and onto the dirt airstrip that ran horizontal to the ocean along the spine of Hilton Head. They tell me there is a golf course there now. I have told this story over the years, but never with the true realization of how it could have ended far differently. Why didn’t it? I think I know.
On another occasion, in 1966, while driving my Dad’s 1965 Cadillac home on I-285 from dropping off my date who lived in DeKalb County, fate was tempted again. It was late at night and this time I fell asleep at the wheel. I was buzzing along, at or above the speed limit – probably 55 or 60 mph back then, when I nodded off. I don’t know exactly how long I was out, but it couldn’t have been very long, but long is relative in a situation like that. At any rate, the next thing I know, I am being awakened by what felt like strong hands grabbing my shoulders and giving me major shakes back and forth. The car bounced down into the median depression, slinging me this way and that as the big caddy bounded down into the little “valley of the shadow of death.” I hung onto the steering wheel for dear life and fought the big car as it hit the bottom of the median and swung up the other side, then back down and up the other, repeating this sequence several times – a lifetime compressed into mere ticks of the clock. I finally got the car under some semblance of control and was able to pull it back out onto the highway on one of those upward swings, mere feet from a concrete bridge abutment. Why didn’t the car flip over in the soft mushy grassy area of the median, or worse, why didn’t I hit the bridge abutment? Were those really hands on my shoulders shaking me awake? I think I know.
During this same time frame, one of my best friends, Tim, and I drove over to Bremen, Georgia to visit the clothes factory outlets. We were in Tim’s little Renault, the one with the sewing machine size engine. As we were driving back to Atlanta on highway 78, we got behind a tractor trailer truck that was moving slower than we wanted to drive. When we finally reached a long flat stretch of road, Tim pulled out to pass the truck. He floored the little car, and it slowly inched out and beside the truck. Slowly we moved farther along side the truck trying to pass (picture the little train from the childhood story that says, “I think I can, I think I can”). Finally the highway starts up a long hill, a yellow line appears on our side of the centerline and we are still not past the truck. Then, to our horror, another truck appears cresting over the top of the hill in front of us, bearing down on us, head on. At this point, we are beyond the point of no return. It is too late to slow down and get back behind the truck we are trying to pass, and the road drops off to our left into a ravine. We have no choice but to try and make it. We are very close to the front of the truck cab, wondering why the trucker doesn’t hit his brakes and let us pass. At the very last moment, just before the oncoming truck plows into us, just as we know that we are going to die, Tim and I glance into each others eyes for the last time, and I utter the immortal last words, “Ah yes, we have no bananas!” At that instant, Tim swerves the little car in front of the truck to our right, barely inches from its huge bumpers that are at eye level, and back into the right lane and safety, as the oncoming truck thunders past us with barely the same clearance. Tim pulls over to the side of the road at the earliest spot, as the big truck passes us by. We sit there, barely breathing, our complexions white as snow, staring ahead at eternity. Slowly, we turn and face each other, and Tim says, “Ah yes, we have no bananas?” and then we both broke into hysterical laughter mixed with tears of joy and relief. The Lord didn’t want those to be my last words.
While still in college, Ronnie, my other best friend, and I took our girlfriends to a picnic in the mountains. I was driving my 1965 gold GTO convertible. We stopped at a little mom and pop gas station, nestled right up beside the road, to fill up my car with gasoline. I was standing to the rear of my car pumping the gas as cars whizzed past just a few feet away. I glanced over my shoulder and looked behind me for some reason, and saw an old pick-up truck driven by an even older man, sort of weaving its way up the highway toward us, not really going very fast. Nothing remarkable about it and nothing to stand and watch. I turned my attention back to pumping the gas. I’m not sure exactly what caught my attention, maybe it was the sound of tires on gravel, maybe it was an angel tapping me on the shoulder, but I turned my head back around just in time to see the old pick-up truck, literally a few feet from me, with no intention of stopping. I was an instant away from being crushed between the rear of my car and the old man’s truck. Thank God for the reflexes of youth, for I immediately jumped up on the rear of the GTO as the truck banged into the rear where an instant before I had been standing. Thankfully the old man couldn’t have been going more than twenty or thirty miles per hour, but it was enough to throw me off the back of my car onto the ground, and for my friends in the car to be bounced around pretty good. Fortunately, the gas pump I had held in my hands turned off and there was no spark to cause a fire. I looked to my friends first and saw that they were OK, and then I rushed to the old man, who was still sitting behind the wheel of his truck. He had a confused look on his face, and was as old as Methuselah, full head of white hair and wrinkles in his weather beaten face. I asked him if he were OK, and he stammered, “I guess I need to get these brakes checked.” I laughed it off, checked the back of my car, and lo and behold, those major heavy duty steel bumpers they used to put on cars had done its job. The bumper itself had a nice indentation, but the rear body of the car didn’t have a scratch, other than where I had tumbled across the rear of the trunk. We drove on, and it was only then when I noticed my hands shaking from the realization of the close call I had just had. Why did I turn around in the nick of time? I think I know.
Another time, Tim and I were coming home late from dropping off our dates, driving South on I-85 just before its intersection with I-75 North and the route home. It was Tim’s last night as a civilian. The next morning he was to report for induction into the Marine Corp, heading for Paris Island boot camp. As we zoomed down the road and rounded the last curve before our exit, we could see the tail lights of another vehicle fairly close in front of us and in our lane. Something didn’t look just right about those tail lights. They were not just red, as is usually the case, but also had bright white lights directly below them. In addition, the car seemed to be growing larger much faster than our speed would have justified. There wasn’t much time to contemplate or process this disparity from the norm. My brain registered that perhaps the car was stopped in our lane, but this was happening too fast for that to be the case. Finally it hit me that this car was not stopped in front of us – quite the contrary – it was backing up at a high rate of speed, God knows why, probably because the driver missed his exit. Who knows? I do know this – I hit the brakes hard and swerved to the left in a sweeping fish-tail that barely missed the onrushing car. Phew! Another close call. You must understand that this all took place a lot faster than my telling it. Tim and I have remembered and discussed this, as well as the “no bananas” occasion, numerous times over the years. Why didn’t it end there? I think I know.
I think about being in the Army during the Viet Nam war. I think about being in the infantry and how, through a chance of fate, I ended up at the U.S. Embassy Diplomatic Medical Mission in Bangkok, Thailand, rather than the jungles of Nam. Did I say chance? I think not. I think I know different.
I think about rushing into the burning Medical Mission to salvage medical records and classified documents, after an explosion destroyed the building, and having a wall fall on my head, nearly knocking me out. I remember being helped out of the building and being taken to the hospital where stitches were put into the gash on my forehead. Could have been worse, much worse. Why not? I think I know.
I remember the time Michelle and I had our dinner interrupted by sounds of a crash outside our home on Ridge Road. We ran outside and saw a wrecked VW laying on its side, across the street in the ditch next to the trees. The wheels were still turning and the engine was chugging, still on. The driver, a young girl, was still in the front seat trying to get out, but unable to get the door open. I climbed up on the side of the car and pulled the door open and climbed into the car and lifted her out to someone else who had stopped to help, then I climbed out after turning off the ignition. The girl, other than being pretty beat up, was OK. The car was not. Totaled. Looking back on that, I wonder why the car didn’t catch fire and explode. Now, I think I know.
There are other instances which I could relay about situations I found myself in, some times in hard places in the world while on Mission Trips, but the truth is that each of us, whether we are aware of it or not, probably have these brushes with eternity more often than we think. I heard it said one time by a man on a call in radio show that he likes to think that there are angels out there looking out for us all the time. When we get stuck behind that slow vehicle blocking the passing lane, well, that just might be an angle behind the wheel of that slow car keeping us from reaching that intersection ahead where the drunk is going to run the red light.
I heard something else on the radio one time, and I committed it to memory, “Patience is trusting God’s timing.” It is all up to God. His will, not ours. His timing. His plan for us.
Psalm 23 says,
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for You are with me,
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
AMEN
Missing the Mark 
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