Aurora | Susan Spess Shay

I believe in miracles. We walk past miracles every day and don’t even realize they’re there.

My sister, Amy, is a living miracle. A little over 21 years ago, she was given a 1% chance of living after being in the front seat of a van that was hit head on by a drunk driver. (That’s a 99% chance of dying, folks.) But she’s alive and well today, praise God!

And I believe that God uses things that satan means for evil for His good.

Of course, you know I’m talking about the Aurora, Colorado Dark Night shooting. Twelve people were killed and fifty eight physically injured.

I’ve read of at least two miracles among the carnage.

The first was written by a Christian woman who writes a blog called, “A Miniature Clay Pot.” (2 Corinthians 4:7) She was at the movie with her two children and another in the theater next door.

When the shooting started, her fourteen-year-old was at the end of the row, straight up from where the shooter was. They all got down on the floor and she threw herself on top of her most easily hit daughter.

Know what else she did? She prayed.

It was a miracle that none of them were hit. Please read her story. It’s beautiful.

And her followers have gone skyrocketed.

I know, you could tell me that wasn’t really a miracle. There were a lot of people in that theater who weren’t hit by the madman’s bullets. I think it was. I believe God used this woman so she could share His merciful goodness with the masses.

But how about this one?

An eighteen-year-old woman named Petra Anderson was hit four times with a shotgun blast. Three times in the arm, the fourth in the head.

The projectile that hit her head entered through her nose and traveled up through her brain to the back of her head. Yeah. Imagine the carnage. The splintered bone, scattered in brain tissue. The mangling of her brain as the piece of metal tore through it.

But after the surgery, the doctors were encouraging. They said there wasn’t much brain damange at all. How?

A miracle.

It seems as if the bullet traveled through Petra’s brain without hitting any significant brain areas. The doctor explains that Petra’s brain has had from birth a small “defect” in it. It is a tiny channel of fluid running through her skull, like a tiny vein through marble, or a small hole in an oak board, winding from front to rear. Only a CAT scan would catch it, and Petra would have never noticed it.

But in Petra’s case, the shotgun buck shot, maybe even the size used for deer hunting, enters her brain from the exact point of this defect. Like a marble through a small tube, the defect channels the bullet from Petra’s nose through her brain. It turns slightly several times, and comes to rest at the rear of her brain. And in the process, the bullet misses all the vital areas of the brain. In many ways, it almost misses the brain itself. Like a giant BB though a straw created in Petra’s brain before she was born, it follows the route of the defect. It is channeled in the least harmful way. A millimeter in any direction and the channel is missed. The brain is destroyed. Evil wins a round.

Please, read the entire story. The man who wrote it was there. It’s beautiful in the telling.

How many other miracles happened that awful night? Many we’ll never know about. The people who’d planned to go and decided not to. The times the gun misfired or was just out of shells.

Whether you’ve been in the presence of a miracle before or not, there’s one we’ve all benefited from. Do you know what I’m talking about?

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him. John 3:16-18 The Message.

Or, the way I learned it as a child–For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3:16 KJV

Have you experienced a miracle in your life? Want to share?