Miracle at a Speedway Station

Today, several members of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, hit the bricks to share God's love in a practical way, giving away 168 bottles of cold water to total strangers in less than an hour.

One member brought her grandsons. When one of the boys saw an elderly man filling up his gas tank at a Speedway station, he asked his grandma if they could share a water with the man. I'm convinced that the young man was responding to a prompt from God's Holy Spirit, because when he and his grandmother had given the water to the man, he was deeply touched.

"Are you the kind of church that prays for sick people," he asked. "Every week," he was told.

He then asked if they could pray for his wife, suffering from a terminal illness, and who he hoped to bring home before she passed. The group of three began to pray, right there by the pump at the Speedway station.

As it happened, a veterinarian, whose office is near the station, saw the praying group, walked over from his office, and asked if he could pray with them.

It's been my experience that when we dare to reach out to others with the love God has given to all the world through the death and resurrection of Jesus, scenes like this happen. Just think what happened in that short interchange of strangers, a miracle at a Speedway station:

• The comfort of God came to a man carrying a world of hurt and grief.
• A little boy learned to respond to Jesus' call to love others as we love ourselves.
• The group of us on this outreach learned again that God uses those willing to follow His lead to spread the message of His love in our communities and in our world.

God was the author of it all and I came away from it simply amazed by Him. (Again!)