10 Prayers You Can't Live Without by Rick Hamlin

Author:Rick Hamlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Guideposts
Published: 2013-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Pray through a Crisis

“Nooooooooo!”

The calls came when I was at lunch. I returned to the office to find my voice mail full of urgent messages from California. First from my older sister. She was breathless and in a hurry, jumping into her car to drive to the hospital in Long Beach. “Ricky,” she said, “we need your help. There’s been an accident. Mike was in a plane crash. Right at the airport. He’s the only survivor. Five other guys died. He’s being rushed to the ER. Please pray. Pray.”

My mom was the next to leave a message: “Honey, I don’t know if you heard but it’s Mike. He was in a plane crash at the airport in Long Beach. I’m heading down there now. He survived. I don’t know how he survived but it’s very, very serious. We need your prayers. Poor Diane and the girls.”

Diane called too. “Ricky, Mike’s holding on, but we all need to pray. Please pray.”

I listened to the messages with a sinking feeling. Mike is my younger sister Diane’s husband. He’s a big boisterous guy with bottlebrush blond hair, a loud voice, a louder laugh and thighs the size of tree trunks. His idea of fun was to ride his bike a hundred miles before breakfast on a Saturday morning. It was impossible to imagine that anyone so physically fit could be hurt. He was wired and funny and full of energy, always forwarding some e-mail about politics or faith or some combination of both. He worked hard running a small business and worked just as hard at his faith, filling up notebooks with Bible verses. He led grace at family dinners with a greeting that could be heard down the palm-lined block: “DEAR GOD…”

I felt so helpless. I wanted to be with my sister Diane and her three girls in the hospital waiting room, getting constant updates. I wanted to hug them, talk to them. I wanted to hear it straight from a straight-talking doctor coming out from the swinging ER doors. Was Mike going to survive? I needed to know exactly what the damage was. “Ricky, please pray.” What else could I do? It was as though prayer was the only refuge of the helpless.

I returned calls. Got my older sister, Gioia, on the line. “What happened?”

“Mike and five other guys were on a business trip,” Gioia said. “They took off from the airport in a small plane. It crashed right after takeoff. It’s all over the news. The engine must have caught on fire. The plane was in flames. When they put the fire out, Mike was the only one alive.”

How awful. Horrific. “Where are his burns?”

“All over.”

What about brain damage, internal damage? What about his heart? What about his lungs? When would they know?

“Who was with him?” I asked.

“Guys he worked with, colleagues, friends,” she said, “the pilot, the owner of the plane.”

“Ughhhhhhhh.” I can’t even put down the sound I made. “This is terrible.”

“We’ve all got to pray. Please pray.

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