Episode Transcript
It's all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of Turn out the Light. Welcome to miracles in the 21st century. I'm Ann Browning. My husband Michael and I had been posted to the churches in Townsville in North Queensland. And at that time we. We were living in a house that was a double story house at the back of the church campground on the banks of the Ross River. Our house was mostly open underneath and everything else was upstairs except for one room downstairs. But the laundry was downstairs, the garage was downstairs and so we used to go up and close off the doors and feel very safe up there. My husband was involved with an evangelistic program out on Palm island and he went over there for about three weeks with a number of Aboriginal church members from Kuranda. And so I was home with our two children and we used to just pray for the mission and we were on our own there. We had a house next to us on one side and we had a school, the church school on the other side. This night I put the kids to bed, they were asleep. And I remembered I hadn't fed our pet goat. And I thought, oh, I know what I'll do. I'll just grab an ice cream container, I'll go down, her bag of oats is down the bottom. I'll open that up and I'll get the oats and I'll go out. I didn't want to go and turn on the light because in Townsville there are lots of cane toads and I really don't like cane toads. And I thought if I have to walk along and feel around and then try and find the light switch, I might step on some cane toads. So I began. I grabbed the ice cream container, I didn't have a torch, so I just went down the stairs, began my journey down. I got a little way down the stairs and I heard a voice say, and turn on the light. And I was shocked because I thought the neighbours had been away and were still away. So I stopped on the step and I turned around and there were no lights on the house next door. So I thought, oh, it's imagination. So I took another steps and I heard a very urgent voice say, ann, turn on the light. And at that moment I realised I'd heard this voice before, this was God's voice. And so I thought, I have to go and turn on the light. If God's told me to do that, hopefully I won't step on any cane tides. So I finished my journey down, turned around to the left, went along, felt the washing machine, felt the laundry tubs, and then I reached up the top until I found the light and turned on the light, and I turned around, and I couldn't believe what I saw. The bag of oats that we fed the goats with was open, and there was a very large taipan snake with its head up, hanging out of this oat bag with its mouth open. And he was very angry. I just walked past him. But here he was, ready to take on anyone that came near him. If I'd gone down the stairs and. And just put my hand into that bag of oats to feed this, our pet goat, I wouldn't be here today. We were too far from the hospital. There was no one around. My little kids were asleep. Michael was away. There is no way I'd be here telling this story today. So I'm standing there frozen, absolutely frozen, looking at this very angry taipan. He was a giant. And because I was still and frozen, he eventually closed his mouth, and he went over the back of the bag, and he went out the side. I still had to feed the goat, so I took courage in my hand, got the oats for the goat, went and fed her, came back, turned out the light, and went up the stairs. And that's when I got very nervous and shaky. But I was absolutely so grateful to our mighty God, because that could have been a very, very different ending to this story. So praise be to God.
