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 a surprising hospital visit. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century.
I'm Ann Browning. We were posted to a country area in New South Wales, and there was a little hospital in that town. So I used to go and visit the patients each week, once a day, once a week.
I would take a basket with some goodies and some books to read and magazines, and I'd go and visit the small hospital, and I'd stop at all the beds and just say hi and just be a little bit of an encouragement to the patients that were there. One day when I went to this hospital, I walked down the hallway and turned into the first bedroom. And there was a patient there who was under a cradle, had hands all bandaged up and looked like he was a patient, a burns patient.
So as I stepped in the door, I heard God speak to me and He said, "This is one of my children." So I walked in and offered him some things. And he said, "Oh, look, as you can see, I can't hold anything."
I said, "You look like you've been burnt." And he said, "Yes." And he told me the story of what had happened to him.
He lived in the, up in the hills and he'd been burnt at a fire. And I was commiserating with him. And when I was leaving, I said to him, "Would you like me to pray for you?" And he said, "How embarrassing.
Would you kneel down beside my bed and pray for me?" He said, I'm not even a Christian. I don't believe there's a God. I said, well, actually, I wasn't going to kneel down beside your bed to pray for you.
I said, I was just going to stand here, but that's okay. I can pray for you at home. And he said to me, well, I suppose I can't stop you praying at home, but no, I don't want you to kneel down beside my bed.
I said, that's okay. And I said goodbye. And as I was leaving, I made a promise to God.
I said, Dear God, I'm going to visit this patient every day until he acknowledges that he needs you in his life. Please don't let him be discharged until he comes to that point. So every day I would go and visit this man in the hospital and we got to be friends.
And he'd ask me about the day because his family lived so far away, had no visitors. So I became his newspaper of the outside world, of what was happening in the town and what I was doing. And occasionally I would mention to him that I'd just been to a Bible study or I'd just been talking about spiritual things with somebody.
And this went on for weeks, quite a number of weeks. And he was there just trying to heal from these terrible burns. After a little while, I think it was a couple of months, I was heading to visit a lady.
And as I was driving along the road, because I thought if I go and visit this lady first, that will be a quick visit, then I will have more time to visit at the hospital. So I'm driving, and a second time this message came, go to the hospital first. So I thought, okay, I know that voice.
That's God talking to me. I need to do that. So I drove to the hospital, drove up, and I parked my car and began walking up to the front door of the hospital.
There were a number of cars all parked up the, the side of the drive. And I saw an elbow sticking out of the window of a car. Oh, before that, that this guy had said to me the day before.
He said, "I would like a Bible. Could you please bring me a Bible?" And I said, "Sure, I'll bring it tomorrow." So I'm walking up this path to the hospital and this elbow's poking out of the car.
And being a friendly person, I just turned and said, "Oh, hi, how are you going?" And I got the surprise of my life. Here was my friend sitting in this car with a lady who turned out to be his wife. And I said to him, why are you in the car? How come you're in the car? He said, I can't believe it.
He said, this morning the doctors came in and they discharged me. So they rang early to my wife and she's come down from home to pick me up. And he said, I've been sitting in this car waiting for you because he said, I don't want to leave without my Bible.
He said, "Have you got my Bible?" I said, "Yes, I've got your Bible. Here is your Bible. How amazing that you're out here.
I was nearly going to go and visit somebody else first, but God told me to come to you first." And so I gave him the Bible, said goodbye to him. I have never seen him since, but I do pray for him quite regularly.
And I don't know how things have gone with him. But if I'd gone to the other person first, there is no way he would have gotten that Bible because he was— he said, I was going to give you another 10 minutes. And if you hadn't come, I would have gone.
So God is amazing. And I've learned something from that. It's good to be listening to God because he knows exactly what's going on in the world.
