I've been on the list for a year and a half, but was too shy
to say something about myself as the list introduction
message requests. Since the conversation at this time seems
to be about theistic and philosophic concerns, I will take
the advice from Bill Payne and post my testimony. I hope it
will do some good:
I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s in W. Pennsylvania
attending public school. I was taught the accepted
evolutionary science 5 days a week while learning creation
on Sunday mornings. There was never a challenge to choose
one or the other, so I made some type of reconciliation
of the two. In general, though I called myself a Christian,
I was not living a life that was "pleasing to God".
In 1970, I became a junior firefighter with my small local
volunteer fire department. After completing a YMCA scuba
course in 1972, I became the fire dept's diver. In 1980, I
became the ass't chief in command of the 12 man dive rescue
unit. I do not wish to share the stories of the horrible
deaths that I had seen in two and a half decades of being a
firefighter and a rescue diver.
However, one story is necessary to my testimony. In June of
1993 two 13 year old boys drowned in a neighboring
community's pond. Myself and another diver were in the
water within 14 minutes. Though we kicked out our
established, organized search patterns from a line tender,
we were unable to find them within an hour. Resuscitaton
attempts failed. The evening news did not show the scene as
firefighters and police officers held each other with
intemingling tears but it will forever be impressed in my
memory.
I believe that event began my spiritual search that I had
put off for so long. The search, I believe, was the Lord's
way of preparing me for a later tragedy.
On New Year's eve of 1993, 6 months later, My wife and I
attended a party with 3 other couples. We brought our 12
year old son, Paul. He stayed with the other couple's boys
in the downstairs gameroom while the adults stayed upstairs.
Our other 3 children were with a babysitter. We left at
1:30 or 2:00 a.m. Paul never told us that one of the boys
kicked him in the head. The injury caused an epidural
bleed. He was unresponsive in the morning. He died later
on New Year's Day in Pittsburgh Children's Hospital, where I
work. The soul shattering loss caused about 3 months of
numbing shock. My wife and I made a concious desperate
decision to learn where Paul was. There was only one source
for this information. For a year and a half, I was absorbed
by the Bible. The words leapt out at me. The Bible became
a book that I could not put down. In earlier years I had
made statements like, I just don't understand the Bible. On
my son's headstone are the first 5 verses of John:
Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God believe
also in Me. In my Father's house are many mansions, if
this were not true, I would have told you. I go now to
prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place
for you, I will come again, and take you to be with Me,
that where I am, you may be also.
I learned the richness and completness of the promises from
the Lord. I learned that the Bible is the final authority
on all matters great and small. I learned that my son is
now walking on streets of gold.
If you're still with me, thank you for listening. To write
this out is a kind of therapy in itself. Since 1994, I have
pulled other children from our rivers. My heart breaks for
the parents of all parents who have lost a child. Working
as a trauma dispatcher at a children's hospital, I see
more than my share. It is the eternal love of Jesus that
keeps me going. Once you have felt that love in your heart,
you never go back.
Dan Muller