He Proved It Again Last Night

Roughly 3 AM last night I woke up and I could not breathe. No joking around, I could not suck air.

I did what you do in the dark. Freaking out, I jumped up and threw my fists into the darkness. Had a JCVD moment like in Bloodsport.

All of a sudden, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

I know that voice. I heard it when I was 12, sitting on the edge of my JCPenney bunk bed reading Revelation, coming to the realization that hell was where I belonged.

“Come unto me,” it said then.

I heard it again roughly seven years later. The voice said, “What is that in thine hand?” A black Bible someone who cared about a punk teenager gave to him.

My wife and I were barely adults, on a stage surrounded by flowers and candles, staring into each other’s eyes, wild with wonder and hope. “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” drifted through the air, accompanied by guitar.

Years later I was on the floor of a hospital room, alone, Urban Cowboy on the stupid, too-loud TV and an impossible choice running through my mind.

“Sir, your wife and daughter may both die.”

A hand on my shoulder. “Peace, be still.” That same voice.

Time moved on at a feverish pace. I found myself alone in a bad situation, a really bad, life-changing situation, surrounded by people no one would associate with.

“Lovest thou me?”

I remember the words I spoke before my friends, my family, my brothers and sisters in Christ. “Depart from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.”

Then I looked into the eyes of my family, both spiritual and physical.

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee.”

I don’t need a 2,000-year-old manuscript to tell me He is alive.

He proved it once again last night, when I couldn’t breathe.