“My mother was a woman of great faith,” recounts Avilda’s daughter. “It was Mother’s practice to never let a day go by without praying to God for his watchful care. When I was a small child growing up in Monroe Louisiana, Mother had a dream one night that she was driving along a country road with my sister and me playing in the back seat of the car. En route, my mother suddenly glanced in the rearview mirror and saw smoke and flames shooting from the trunk area. Quickly, she pulled to the side of the road, jumped out, and began searching for something to douse the flames. In a nearby gully, she spotted a rusty bucket filled with rainwater. Grabbing it, she ran back to the car and emptied the bucket on the fire. A strange dream, my mother thought as she awoke. And she let it go at that.
The next morning, Mother piled my sister and me into the car for a sixty-mile trip to attend Sacrament Meeting. About halfway there, on an infrequently traveled road, she was suddenly startled to see flames and smoke rising from the trunk of the car. My sister and I were frightened, but because of her dream Mother knew what to do. Pulling over to the side of the road, she quickly got out, ran about ten yards to a nearby gully, located a rusty bucket of rainwater, and extinguished the fire. Then, catching her breath and offering a simple prayer of gratitude, she settled back in the car and drove to church.”
Avilda’s miracle story is not uncommon. Many people have experienced divine intervention from an unseen Source. Often, that intervention came at a time of crisis when other options had failed. Pure and simple, it was a gift.
Gifts, by definition, are pure, voluntary offerings of love, indisputable evidence of the Giver’s affection. A gift cannot be earned; it is freely imparted with no expectation of repayment. Furthermore, inherent in the gift is the personality of the Giver. The gifts of God, for example, reveal his perfect attributes of character—his power, his awareness, his love—upon which believers rely and upon which their faith pivots. These gifts—miracles—are unique in that they are inexplicable by the laws of nature. We receivers cannot duplicate them. Large or small, the gifts of God attest to his nearness and his interest in our welfare. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, “God is found in the details of our lives.” Thus we can expect to find him as we struggle with relationships, finances, health and weaknesses. We discover him as we labor over difficult decisions. We become acquainted with him as we receive unanticipated warnings of danger, gain added strength to endure, and follow carefully prepared paths of escape. From time to time we glimpse him delivering unexpected bouquets of affection, those almost anonymous offerings that communicate, “I am aware. I am near. I love you.”
Gifts is a collection of real-life experiences when extraordinary help was needed, a gift was given, and evidence of the existence of the Giver became clear. The stories in this book illustrate God’s active involvement in our lives and that his intent is to shower us with his gifts. The stories are meant to provide hope, anchor faith, and demonstrate that prayers are heard and answers come.
“Our family had suffered through a string of serious illnesses that had taken their toll on our family. My husband, who had been sick for three years, had finally come to the conclusion that his business could not be saved and that he needed to liquidate the inventory to pay his creditors. He made the difficult decision to close down the company and begin to pay off $300,000 in debts--without a job! Two years later, he had managed to pay back only $100,000 by liquidating the best of the remaining inventory. To retire the last $200,000 seemed impossible and he began to despair.
On New Years day, 1993, he called a friend whom he knew to be a man of faith. After my husband had explained our situation, he and his friend decided to pray and seek God’s help. Then the friend, in the authority of the priesthood, laid his hands on my husband’s head and sought divine counsel. The words of the blessing were astonishing.
“The time for your efforts is over. Heavenly Father has prepared another way to pay your debts.”
When the blessing had ended my husband asked, “I don’t understand. What should I do?”
“Go about your daily life,” his friend answered. “You debts are God’s now.”
Ten days later, the area where we lived experienced a massive snowstorm.
Early on the morning of January 10th, my husband received a phone call and was told that he should hurry down to the warehouse where his inventory was stored. When he arrived, he could not believe his eyes. The warehouse roof had collapsed under the weight of the snow. A water line had broken and water was gushing all over his inventory. It appeared as though a bomb had exploded. Substantially everything was damaged.
As we later gathered to consider our options, bankruptcy was the only thing that came to mind. It was a discouraging alternative, one that we had tried to avoid for several years. Then we remembered the insurance policy. Five months earlier, the thought had weighed on my husband’s mind that he should reinsure the inventory for a value equal to what we owed the creditors. Although he had to scrimp to find the money for the extra premium, he had followed the prompting.
The result?
Within six weeks from the day of the priesthood blessing we were out of debt. The insurance company paid us $200,000!”
Desiring to remain anonymous, the people that contributed to Gifts regard their stories as sacred. To a person, they consider their experiences as holy ground whereon they became acquainted with God. Although these stories are diverse and intimately personal, they are woven from a common loom, summoning within their owners deep confidence in their Father in Heaven. Placing their hope in the Giver of gifts proved not to be a vain effort after all. These people experienced miracles, and they expect that when they encounter difficulty again, they will once more be able to appeal to a God that has the ability to help, is indeed aware of them, and cares enough to intervene. They believe that their hope is anchored to something substantial. Simply put, they believe they are not alone.
The stories in Gifts do not mean to suggest that there is an equation for God’s intervention: A+B=C. Our definition of deliverance is seldom God’s definition. We can dictate neither timelines nor terms. But, as Gifts demonstrates, we can be absolutely confident that our every prayer is heard and counts, and that somewhere in the process of working through, a divine encounter will happen.
“When Mother was dying of cancer, she asked for a blessing to know the will of the Lord. I agreed to give the blessing, but I knew it would be the hardest of my life. Not that it would be harder for the Lord. I knew that he could heal cancer as easily as a cold. But for me, I had to prepare. I dared not approach this blessing casually. Over the next few days, I attended the temple and prayed and humbled myself before the Lord. I read the scriptures about miraculous manifestations of power and healing. I counseled with wise men that had spent a lifetime exercising their priesthood righteously. Then I began to fast. I would not eat until the blessing was given. Mother lived six hours away. As I drove through the night, I prayed continuously. I attempted to remove all doubt from my mind. I knew that God could heal Mother; I knew that the priesthood was the power; I knew that the ordinance of anointing and sealing had been revealed for this very purpose. I had come to that point of confidence and clarity. I pushed aside the temptation to craft words and plan the blessing. I had no desire to be eloquent or clever. I only wanted to plainly state what would be dictated by the inspiration of the Spirit—and remarkably, I now felt fully prepared to pronounce the promise of healing and witness a miracle.
I will not recount my reaction to stepping into Mother’s room and witnessing her frail, weakened body. My emotions were so tender. I loved my mother. How I longed for divine permission to say the words of healing. Our family knelt in prayer. We pled for a miracle. I was sure it would come.
It did.
At the moment I laid my hands upon my mother’s head, the Spirit said, “No.”
I wasn’t prepared for the answer. I felt Mother relax and concede under my hands. The miracle followed--sweet words of comfort and peace, every word dictated by a loving influence that knew her and understood her pain. Mom was going home.
Much later, in the setting of a comfortable, frontier Sunday School class, criticism was raised once more over the company’s shortsightedness in leaving so late in the year.
“An old man in the corner sat silent and listened as long as he could stand it, then he arose and said things that no person who heard him will ever forget. His face was white with emotion, yet he spoke calmly, deliberately, but with great earnestness and sincerity.
“In substance he said, ‘I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts mean nothing here, for they give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. Mistake to send the Handcart Company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife was in it…. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church, because everyone of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with him in our extremities….’” (Relief Society Magazine, January 1948, p. 8.)
It is upon our own personal holy ground that we add our stories to those in found in Gifts. It is within our individual sacred space that we become acquainted with one who hears, who knows us, who has the ability to help, and who loves us enough to shower us with his gifts.
–Larry Barkdull
In the autumn of 1941, Avilda Curtis received an unexpected gift. |