Hanging at the Well
A Testimony to God's Grace
Chapter 21: The Greatest Miracles
As I mentioned in the Introduction, “when you drink from God’s well and you hang close by, miracles happen.” In these pages I have mentioned several physical miracles that happened, but the greatest miracles are those that take place in the changed lives of people. In respect of people’s privacy I will not tell the stories we witnessed as people came to drink from the well and enjoy new life. We saw spiritual and physical healings, marriages renewed, alcoholics restored, atheists come to faith, lost people gain purpose, and the list goes on.
In one of my favorite passages of scripture, God, through the Prophet Isaiah, invites those who are thirsty (missing the meaning of life) to come and drink deeply from the water in His well (Is 55:1-3). The Lord says His water is free and satisfying. Zechariah pronounces that our God is a “spring of living water” (Zech 2:13, 17:13) and Jesus claims to be that water (John 4:10). The last invitation given in scripture repeats what God says through Isaiah, “Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.
I love the description of well water given by C.S. Lewis in Prince Caspian. While the battle was raging for the control of Narnia, Aslan took Susan and Lucy to see the woman who had taught Prince Caspian’s about Old Narnia. She had been expelled from the capital city and was now near death. As Aslan restored her to life, she was brought a drink from the well. This is how C.S. Lewis describes the well’s contents:
“It was not water but the richest wine, red as red-currant jelly, smooth as oil, strong as beef, warming as tea and cool as dew.”
The words smooth, strong, warming and cool all found in one drink communicates fulfilling satisfaction of the Living Water that restores hope to life and produces miracles of changed lives. There is one miracle story, however, I want to tell. It is a beautiful story of what happens when one comes to drink and finds the deepest satisfaction in God’s Word.
Along with God’s gift of a loving and supportive wife came two of the most wonderful in-laws a man could ask for. Norman and Pauline Coffey had met at the University of New Mexico. After their marriage they moved around the state where Norm was a teacher and principal of various schools. They had three daughters, Mary Janet (Jan), Peggy Lee and Judith Ann.
Even before our wedding day I had no problem calling Peggy’s parents “Mom” and “Dad.” They were good, God-fearing people. However, they never knew a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They attended church as was socially expedient in the communities where they lived. In 1958, just before Peggy was to enter high school, they moved to La Habra, California where Dad was to be a high school math teacher and counselor.
When he retired in 1973, Dad and Mom moved into the house that had been owned by Mom’s parents in Sun City, AZ. We were living in Kingman and got to visit them when we came to Phoenix. Of course, they were thrilled when we were hired by the church in Glendale, AZ – just eleven miles from their house. They immediately started attending.
Peggy’s father had been raised in the Christian Church in Tecumseh, Nebraska. However, he had been away from it for many years. It was not a stretch for them to come to church where their daughter and grandchildren were. However, it was at Glendale Christian Church where he and Mom began to drink at the well.
Life had taken a sudden change for Mom in 1966, just a year after we were married. We were living in Illinois when she called to tell us she had noticed some unusual lumps on her neck. Test showed that it was a rare form of cancer. By the time Mom and Dad moved to Arizona in 1973, she had been through many treatments, surgeries and remissions. So many times we believed she was “over this” only to have it return.
Shortly after our move to Glendale, Peggy, her parents, and I went to hear Corrie ten Boom, the Christian lady who had been imprisoned for helping Jews during World War II. At the end of that evening, Peggy’s mother invited Jesus into her heart to be her personal savior. She was never the same after that. She grew and grew in her relationship with Christ.
In 1978 her cancer returned, this time there would be no remission. As the disease took a toll on her physical body, Mom’s spiritual life continued to grow. People would come to visit her and she would share her faith with them. She was often a strength to us. She loved for us to read the Psalms to her.
Mom’s physical body lost the fourteen-year battle with cancer in June 1980. However, her soul – the real her – soared to meet with the Savior she had embraced a few years before. That is the greatest of all miracles.
Peggy’s father continued to live in Sun City until 1998 when he moved back to his beloved New Mexico to live with his youngest daughter, Judy. From the time of his recommitment to Christ until his graduation to glory in May 2000, he remained faithful and active in the Lord.
This is a miracle story that is very close to our hearts. However, because Living Water flows from God’s well, there were many such stories during our seventeen and half years in Glendale.
Proceed to Chapter 22