Perspiration trickled steadily from my
forehead after standing three hours in line with my wife and perhaps ten
thousand other people outside the coliseum.
We had driven several hundred miles the day before to attend a series of
wonderful crusade meetings. Now we were
waiting for the doors to open for the last and likely most eventful session.
The line finally began to move, and slowly we
crept forward. For more than twenty
minutes we moved until at last we were able to enter the building. Quickly we hurried to entrance ramps to the
seat sections.
Every meeting had been crowded. In fact, a few thousand people the night
before had been unable to get in.
As we emerged inside the arena, our hearts sank. It appeared that every seat already was
taken.
Quickly we went back down the ramp and
hurried as best we could in the dense crowd to another section. Again, no seats. We repeated the process over and over.
Slowly we began to realize that we might be
among the ones forced to go outside.
As a last attempt, hurrying before the
announcement was made that all standing must leave, we walked around to the
section beside the stage. We struggled
to get to the top of the ramp to the seats.
Looking about, I saw no available seats.
I looked down. Nothing. I looked up.
Nothing. I was panting now, and I
just stood, damp from perspiration, tired from the day of waiting and standing
in the blazing sun.
Slowly I turned to where my wife was standing
and, I assumed, looking around.
Cathy was staring directly into the stands to
our right, not moving at all. I looked
in the direction she was staring. A
seated woman was staring back at us. Two
empty seats were to her right, and another to her left, but no people were
moving towards them.
“It’s Joan,” was all Cathy could say.
It really was Joan, the wife of the former
assistant minister of the church back home, hundreds of miles away. Joan had been fighting a serious illness for
years. She and her husband had moved
from our city a year ago.
Shocked at seeing her in this huge crowd, we
did our best to walk around others and go towards her.
As we came nearer, Cathy shouted, “I can’t
believe it’s you! We’ve been looking
everywhere for seats. There just aren’t
any.”
“We’ve been saving these two,” Joan replied,
stunned at seeing us. “I guess we were
saving them for you.”
We all knew God had arranged this, for Cathy
and me to be able to participate in the final session and to sit beside Joan
and her minister husband Bob, who was dumbstruck by our presence when he
returned in a minute to claim his seat on Joan’s left. We even had time to pray together for Joan’s
health before the night ended. Another
precious moment orchestrated by God.
Copyright © 2017 by John Newlin
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Keep Your Eyes on Jesus!
P. O. Box 15797,
Wilmington, NC 28408 910 395
1465
www.johnnewlinministries.org
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