Sustained

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Psalm 145:14
“The Lord sustains all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down” (NASB).

          Today’s events proved rather unusual in the life of the Pates. When a voice came over the PA system in the library (where my 9th grade English class was meeting for library orientation) and said that I had a call, I knew that something was up because that only happens when there is an emergency.  My husband informed me that he had sustained a fall off of a disk harrow at work and had hurt his leg and needed the insurance card. He was calm, so I remained so too and simply prayed for him as my class continued their orientation. Ten minutes later, I took the card out to him and saw that he had massive swelling above his right shin where he had fallen onto a disk as he stepped off the harrow. He spent most of the day in the ER making sure that there was not a fracture, but he is fine—just extremely sore and in some pain. Even so, God is good. Greg had stepped onto a tire that he forgot was elevated off of the ground, and as it rolled under him, he fell directly onto one of the dull disks on the harrow. The disk did not cut him or even his blue jeans, but you can clearly see where he fell onto it—as the neat line across the swelling shows. Had he stepped down facing the other direction, he might be missing a good chunk of his leg (if he had it at all) because they had just replaced the dull ones on the front with sharp new disks. He also threw his hands out to catch his fall, and his elbows are sore and bruised, but OK. The men who worked with him also said that he narrowly missed hitting his head on another disk, which would likely have been disastrous. Clearly, God’s hand sustained him when he fell today. Of that I have no doubt.
          We live on the cusp of eternity at all times, and today was a poignant reminder of that for me—our time on this earth is limited. God is always good regardless of the situation at hand, and I truly believe I would say the same thing had the outcome been different today. Psalm 145 continues in this vein, and I want to share it as praise to the One True God:
                        The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all his deeds.
                        The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon
                        Him in truth. He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him; He
                        will also hear their cry and will save them. The Lord keeps all who
                        love Him, but all the wicked He will destroy. My mouth will speak
                        praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless His holy name forever            
                        and ever.
Whatever situation this finds you in, I hope that you know the Lord as your savior, and if so, that you have an understanding of His sovereignty in all things in your life regardless of the circumstances of your life. God sustained my husband when he fell because He has a plan for him that is not yet finished, and those plans are for good, not for harm, so that he can have hope. 
For those unfamiliar with farming, the picture above is an example of what a disk harrow would look like. (Source: http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?_adv_prop=image&fr=moz35&sz=all&va=john+deere+disk+harrow.) 

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