The Hands of God

 How God Used a Clock to Remind a Grieving Mother of His Promise

We experienced another of God's little miracles; the sort that come along when God needs to remind you he's still there. First a little background. It was March 7, 1975 around nine or ten o'clock in the evening. Sheila had been in labor since 2 am that morning. The doctor gave her something for pain and she was in and out of it. Labor pains would come and she'd sit up and holler. King babies come in 9 pound plus sizes with enormous heads. Matt was no different. Several of her friends and I were sitting with her, talking and waiting. 

Suddenly, she sat up, said, "Isaiah 54: 1 and 13." Then she passed out again. We looked it up in a Bible we had on the bedside table. It said, (vs. 1) "Sing aloud, O barren woman, you who have not been in labor; break forth into singing and rejoice, you who have not travailed with child; for more are the children of the barren than the children of her that is beloved by her husband, says the LORD. (vs 13) And all your sons shall be taught of the LORD; And great shall be the peace of your children."

Turns out we had to trust in that promise a lot with our boys, but God has "taught" all of our children over the years in one manner or the other. A little warning about that, though. God doesn't always teach your children the way we think He ought to. Parents' instinct is to protect their children from danger, pain, and discomfort. God often prefers to pull the rug out from under the little wahoos and let 'em take a tumble. We often had to take a deep breath, let them fall and pray, "God, we trust you know what you're doing."

As you may know if you read this column regularly, we lost our middle son, Micah, in 2006. Fourteen years earlier, Sheila wrote a song called Corin the Piper. She didn't know where it came from and wasn't her usual style. I've written about how the song came back to comfort her when he died. This wasn't the first time God checked in on us to let us know He is still there making things work out as he promised.

Most recently, we were talking to Matt on the phone and he mentioned something that happened to him that he believed was a little comforting sign from God. We were talking about the time his wife had decided to leave him. He had been suffering the effect of increasing symptoms of hereditary bipolar disorder. He had been going through his files looking for documents he would need when she divorced him. He came upon a copy of his birth certificate we'd ordered for him a few years back. What caught his eye was the only bit of color on the  black and white document - a red stamp showing the date the copy was made - October 18. Something about it nagged at him as he finished sorting through the little pile of paper that documented his life. 

At the time my son had been reading one of those Bible-in-a Year plans. The reading guide was there beside the gathering pile of documents. He turned to October 18 and the central chapter was Isaiah 54. Verse 1 caught his eye - "Sing aloud o' barren woman...." He glanced down to verse 13. "Your sons shall be taught by the Lord." He took the verses as a reminder that God was watching him and would continue to be his teacher. Every day to this day we pray for him and with him at 1:13 pm, a reminder of those promise texts from the night of his birth.

Micah 1995

Later, after we talked to him that day, I was struck by a memory from the night Micah passed away. We'd just got our antique Howard Miller mantel clock back from the clockmaker. As it began to chime for us once again, we were drawn back to that terrible night. Sheila and I had gone to bed early while Micah was still up watching television in bed. We had already gone to sleep and the house was quiet. Micah's movie tape had ended and everything was still.  Suddenly, there was whir as the clock chime tried to spin up. Then there was a pronounced single click as the chime gear attempted to move the hammers to sound the chime. But the chime spring had wound down and couldn't turn the chime mechanism. Sheila woke straight up at the click sound and sudden quiet that followed. Immediately, she had very a bad feeling. She woke me up and in an urgent voice said, "Go check on your son." I hurried to his room. To my horror, Micah was rolled over, face down in a pillow. He'd evidently had a seizure. He'd had nighttime seizures since his teens; something that had shown little response to treatment. He slept with a CPAP machine to help him breathe and keep his oxygen levels up. That night he'd gone to sleep without putting the CPAP mask on. 

Flipping on the light, I rushed to his bedside. I rolled him over, checked his pulse and finding none, began CPR while Sheila called 911. It was close to half an hour before the ambulance arrived and took over. We followed them to the hospital that night, praying all the way. The next three days and nights were a heart-breaking nightmare.

But while Sheila and I were talking about that night, we were again blaming ourselves. We went to bed early. We didn't make sure he put on his CPAP. We failed to look out for him. Where was God's promise for our children? Sheila said she would never forget the moment the clock stopped. I do to. And I remember the time exactly. It was 1:13 am. The clock has a peculiar glitch. It always chimes about 2 minutes early - some kind of mechanical defect. It still rings at 13 minutes, 28, 43, and 58 minutes. I suspect God has prevented the clockmakers, who had twice attempted to repair the clock, from fixing the chime so that it ran on time. They never did, though I had spent more than $350 dollars on repairs over the years. 

That night the hands of the clock stopped precisely at 1:13 am. I've known this for years, but never connected it to Isaiah 54, verses 1 and 13! It was our promise that God left us - a note on the hands of the clock that awful moment to let us know He was still watching. Even in that awful moment, He was taking care of our son. And He also left us a sign to comfort us 16 years later, when it was just the two of us 3000 miles from home and our kids and feeling again the pain of losing a child. Micah was such a good person and it was hard to understand why he was taken from us.

But our God is a kind God; much more so than we give Him credit for. Remembering that little handwritten note from God, was such a comfort to Sheila. Micah's mom still grieves for him all these long years later. That terrible night God laid His hands on the clock and stopped it at 1:13, saying, "Fear not my children. Remember my promise. I loved Micah. He'll be safe with me till I come for you both. The peace I promise is his and can be yours if you only believe."

And God keeps giving us little signs and wonders to remind us we are loved by Him. He left his thumbprint that awful night. Then, sixteen years later, just when we needed His reassurance again, God reminded us that he'd already left us a message that night so long ago.

© 2022 by Tom King