Glad Tidings

In times of great stress, we need to hear about miracles.  I can find no better encouragement than reports of good news during the 2004 tsunami.  Here are just a few where angels and saints might have been involved:

---The Santhome Cathedral Basilica in Chennai, India, was right in the path of the storm.  But even though waves devastated the coast, Father Lawrence Raj says the sea did not touch the Basilica.  This building sits at the site where Saint Thomas, one of Christ’s apostles, was buried in 72 A.D.  Although all the buildings on either side and in front of it were damaged or washed away, no water touched the recently-renovated Basilica.

According to legend, St. Thomas planted a post at the top of the steps leading to the Cathedral, and vowed that the sea water would never touch the post. Hundreds of homeless survivors who have been staying in the church ever since the tsunami credit St. Thomas for their survival.  “It is Saint Thomas who has saved me. This church was untouched by the waters because of the miraculous power of the St Thomas post," said K Sebastiraj, one of many fisherman who sought shelter in the Santhome Cathedral.

---Floridian Mike Pena was relaxing with his wife and son on the Patong Beach in Thailand when he saw the ocean retreat at least a half-mile away from shore.  As fish flopped in the sand, Mike and other puzzled tourists looked out to sea and saw, with horror, the huge waves rolling in. 

As a field construction engineer, Mike had just returned from working in Iraq, and his son had returned from a tour of duty there.  Mike’s wife Al had promised that if her husband and son came home safely, she would return to Thailand, her birthplace, and make a pilgrimage to a temple in Phuket to pray and light candles, not an easy journey due to her advanced arthritis. Now, as Mike saw the scene, he realized he was seeing a tsunami.  He grabbed Al, yelled to his son and the three ran for their lives.

But a huge wave bore down on them.  Al fell, and Mike lost his grip on her.  The water crashed over them.  Mike was hit in the back with a beach chair and tossed about.  He cried out to God.  How would Al survive if he died?

Suddenly, he says, he felt a strong hand, pulling him up.  Gasping for air, he looked around.  But there was no one there.  “You hear people talk about things like this,” Mike says, “but I swear it happened.  Something was there, pulling me up.”

Soon he spotted a pickup truck, with Al and his son clinging to the back of it.  “I was never so happy to have them both okay,” he said later, speaking from his hospital bed.  Even an old family photo, which he always carried, survived the storm.  It is a mystery the family will never understand, Mike says, but they give thanks every day.

Perhaps it shows that a) God is in control.  And b) There is a divine plan for each of us, and those taken play just as important a role in that plan as those who are spared.  This life is simply a gateway to the eternity we all hope to share, with God and with His angels.

(C) 2004  Joan Wester Anderson   www.joanwanderson.com

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