Miracle on Ives Street
Posted: Sun. Apr, 17 2016Miracle on Ives Street
When does God move to surprise you in the case of something that you believed without a doubt was a lost cause? Does He move right away or does He sovereignty wait until the last minute? I suspect we have all had a lot of the immediate kind and few of the last minute kind, the… all hope is lost kind. I assume this because the latter are so often talked about as almost legendary. We see them infrequently in the Bible compared to the ways of people in their everyday lives. The “God moves right away” kind happens so often that we sometimes miss them or mistake them for coincidences. With maturity we learn to dismiss the word “coincidence” from our vocabulary all together and come to expect these “quick fixes” from God without much fanfare or emotion as the acts of a faithful God. He is so faithful. But the handful of “holy crap, God waited until the last minute after I had lost all hope” fixes are great accelerators of faith, and they are infrequent for a reason. David doesn’t meet many Goliaths. He doesn’t even meet two, just one. Yet David meets many victories in battle. For a warrior like David, battles are frequent. We find David receiving forgiveness over and over, as we all do. This is frequent and daily, but that forgiveness is even possible is a miracle, but we become used to it, as we should under the grace of God. There is one Red Sea crossing for Moses and the Exodus, while the manna from heaven fell every day but Saturday. The daily miracles of God, His deliverances as well as His constant ministry to us are from outside of the normal world and therefore truly miracles and they are common only in the sense that they are frequent. It is right that we expect them. That is faith! It is wrong that we take them for granted. But the miracles that I am writing about today are the few in a lifetime that shocks the believer so much, that his faith flows forth like a living river. While the one is common and continues to prove our faith, the other may be purposely made so uncommon by God that when they change the face of our faith, they get burned into our memory so permanently, that they change our very person, deep down between joints and marrow and soul and spirit. These things, we know, can never ever be taken for granted. It is the most terrible response to the infrequent miracle to dismiss it as chance or to not even acknowledge what it really is. Many in Israel watched David behead a giant and it no effect on them at all. Many got to the other side of the Red Sea as pedestrians and continued to think Egyptian gods were just as good and powerful as Jehovah.
I have been taught in the past that faith increases slowly over time spent walking with God and at certain times its growth is greatly accelerated in days of great adversity or pressure. I believe this to be true, yet it is not always adversity that is the vehicle of God’s advanced placement school room. I think that is too narrow a view. While adversity is often the vehicle, God can and does use any number of circumstances, including prosperity or even the mundane, where He shows you His presence in a way that makes your heart empty of all resistances to faith. I guess all I am saying is that at times, when you least expect it, God shows Himself to you in a rush of brilliance that you never expected. Yet to you, and only to you, it was the clearest sight of God you have seen thus far. And when you do see Him in this way He empties you. As the Mercy Me song I Can Only Imagine what will pours forth may be any number of things, but to be sure, it will pour forth. This emptying occurs because the presence of God unclogs the flow of unbounded faith. It was flowing drop by drop and then it gushes forth. This gushing will include various emotions and they will be strong. We must let them go, but without losing control. It is important to know that we must never attempt to hold them back in some stoic belief, as this would only hinder the experience that God wants you to fully enjoy. I can’t imagine that David did not let out a “rebel yell” as he held high the head of the Philistine.
So then, I share this personal experience with you, and for no other reason than to encourage your faith as it did mine and for also for the reason that I just have to. It may be somewhat selfish of me that I use my own experience, but since I truly seek nothing for myself and all glory to God, I write it out anyway.
My wife Kris and I just traveled to my home state of Rhode Island to visit my aging mother. She is in the care of my sister, Eileen (all Irish names in this family, and I do think she has one leg shorter than another) and she lives in an in-law apartment at Eileen’s house on Ives Street in Providence. My sister needed a break from both full time jobs of work and mom and she went to Ireland on vacation. Kris and I came at this time to allow her to have that break without worries of mom’s care. Mom is now 93 and her body and mind have been declining, but especially her mind as of late. I never imagined for a moment that she wouldn’t recognize me. The first night we arrived, Monday night, mom seemed to recognize me but not my wife Kris, who she has met several times. The next day she did not recognize either of us. My mother and I have had a very close relationship all through our lives. As a kid I was labeled a “mamma’s boy” by my other brothers and they were absolutely right. I am the baby. Mom, her given name is Anne, would introduce me as “her baby” to others well into my adulthood. We always had a special bond and we both knew it.
I dealt with the disappointment of not being remembered by her in an objective way, or at least I thought I did. The next day, Thursday, Kris and I were her sole caregivers. The day before there was a wonderful nurse there for the whole day. But on Thursday, not once did she know where she was or who Kris and I were. We spent the whole day and night with her in her small room, making sure she didn’t walk somewhere and fall, trying to make sure she ate, seeing to her needs, and even plopping her in a wheel chair and taking her outside on the porch for a time for some fresh air. As the day rolled on and on … and on, she seemed to look at us both in a distrustful way. Not only did she not know us, she didn’t know where she was. She was sullen and somewhat sad, though when asked she wouldn’t admit it. I cannot imagine what that must be like - to not know who is around you or where you are, expecting something and someone else. It’s got to be like a bad dream that you never wake up from.
Eileen would be home (Ives Street) on Friday, around 4 pm.
By the end of Thursday, being treated as a stranger by the mother I had so loved; I had reached a point of great sadness. I broke down mentally and emotionally. It hurt. That objectivity that I tried to keep was gone and just sadness crept in and took hold of every room in my soul. Kris of course was a great comfort, as she always faithfully is, and we simply decided that mom was gone and to simply think of things as if she had already gone to heaven and I would just have to wait to see her there. The finality of this thought comforted me. It was over and done with mom. I was to play golf with my dear friend the next day. Mom was gone and life for me would go on.
The next day I hoped golf would distract me. As I waited for my friend to pick me up from my sister’s house Friday morning, I didn’t even go in to see my mom in her room. Why bother I thought, she’ll just think I’m the big orderly that is imprisoning her from yesterday. I really couldn’t take any more of that. There was the great nurse there that morning and she came out of the room and said “hi” and I just said “hi” back.
At this point, I actually couldn’t wait to get on the plane home. And, the golf distraction worked, we had a blast golfing and I even golfed pretty well, which for me is under 100.
My sister finally got home that afternoon and Kris sent me a message while I was on the golf course, that the presence of my sister, who my mother fully recognized, had jarred a great amount of her memory free, and that it was possible that she would recognize me. I, having already put the matter away in God’s hands in finality, in heaven, didn’t have any hope.
God shows up in style at Ives Street.
When I got back to Ives Street and greeted my sister a welcome home, I went into my mom’s room, expecting the same reception, and I found her lying down in the same bed that I had sat next to on and off for three days. She was lying there with Kris sitting beside her. My mom looked up and saw me, and Kris said, “Joey is here.” In hope from Kris’ message I asked her if she knew who I was and she responded with loving eyes and two open palms lightly touching each of my cheeks, “Of course I do, you’re my Joey.” I, of course, totally lost it, and we hugged and talked. It was clear in her eyes that she knew just who I was. To me, this was one of those appearances from God that wasn’t daily.
It was just for me. God showed up at this moment, behind the eyes of Anne, so that I could see what He could do with my lost hope. Another person who was not so in love with my mom would have dismissed it as a common occurrence, but not for me. No way! This is why revelations from the word and the KA-POW appearances by God are not for anyone else but you. You must not doubt them as just coincidence or which is far worse, not notice them and see them for what they truly are. God just showed up at the doorstep of your soul, He knocked, now open up and let Him in.
Like the great and comforting mom she was, and is, she asked me to stop crying and said that everything was all right. Then she said, “I thought I was never going to see you again,” to which I replied through a stream of tears, “I didn’t think so either.” No lie, that’s exactly how it went down. No one in Hollywood could have written it. My mother was lost to me and then, in a moment that I didn’t expect, she was found. My sister, who she always sees and always hears was the key that jogged loose her memory.
God could have made it so that I would be visiting when my sister was there all through, but He didn’t. I know God arranged it this way so that my faith in Him would gush forth, without the hindrances that I usually put before it. The next day (today, as I write this on the plane ride home) she was still knowing me and Kris and was just delightful to be with. I see dying grace at work in her. I’m flying over eastern Oregon and am landing soon. It’s so good to be home, and it’s so good to have seen the presence of God in a most unexpected faith. I miss my congregation and my pulpit, and I’m not returning as the same man that left. Praise God for all His wonderful works. Only He is worthy to be called wonderful.
Love to my entire congregation and royal family, fruit is less without you,
Grace and Truth Ministries
Pastor Joe Sugrue
PS. I have not used an editor on this so please excuse any typos that I have missed. I know you will and I know you will rejoice with me as I will rejoice with you when God mysteriously and surprisingly shows up in your life like a blaze of fire.