It's a Miracle!

In my last post, I put up my 2019 Christmas card right after Halloween. I was scheduled to undergo open-heart surgery on November 4^th, 2019, and mentioned how you never know how these things will go. I survived, so it does look like God has more of a race for me to run!

If you’re thinking that’s the miracle, you’d be wrong. They replaced my mitral valve, and performed a bunch of other procedures on my heart, stopping it in the process. I’m repaired and alive because of the skill and training of the surgeons, the surgical team, and the hospital nurses and staff. I was surprised that this is becoming a fairly common type of surgery; 40,000 mitral valve operations are performed every year… with that number continually increasing.

So what’s the miracle, then? Well, there are actually two miracles that I witnessed during my hospital stay. Remember the Christmas card I published with my last post? Well, I print hundreds of them every year, and make it my mission to hand out as many as I can to everyone I meet. This is probably annoying to family and friends that get asked 10 to 20 times if I’ve given them a card. Seriously, how am I supposed to remember everyone who already got a card? Anyway, I took a stack of my Christmas cards to the hospital with me, determined to give one to every single person that crossed my path. I did not expect that it would be many people. After all, I was in for open-heart surgery. It wasn’t like I’d be running up and down the halls of the hospital.

I was in the hospital for a week. Unbelievably, I handed out over 100 of my Christmas cards to unique individuals during my stay! But that still isn’t one of the miracles.

The first miracle was two-fold, and started just before my heart surgery. I had been prepped and wheeled into the operating room. I was clutching my stack of Christmas cards, as I wanted to share them with the surgical staff before they put me under. There were a couple of big guys who slid me off the bed and onto the operating table. I handed the first guy a Christmas card, and was about to hand the second guy a card, too, when I noticed that his name badge said Mohammed. Before he could decline, I said, “I make a unique Christmas card every year, because I want to share the joy of Christmas with everyone. I’d like you to have one, too.” He stared wordlessly at me for a moment, then reached out, took the card and pocketed it. Next thing I remember is waking us in the ICU with a painful scar on my chest, and wires and tubes coming out of me from all kinds of places. Two days later, however, Mohammed stopped by my bed to tell me that he liked the Christmas card. He had read it, and said that it was giving him a lot to think about.
Praise God for the miracle of planting a seed!

The second miracle occurred in the middle of the night couple of days after the surgery. I had pressed the call button, and instead of my normal nurse, her supervisor popped in to see what I needed. From my bed, I had seen her at the nurse’s station several times; she was all business with the other nurses and staff. I had been wondering if I would ever be able to hand her a card, and now here she stood before me. She introduced herself as Judith, and I offered her a Christmas card. As she took it, she opened it and began to read it aloud. I stopped her and told her she couldn’t read it. “It’s a song, you have to sing it.” Not even missing a beat, Judith began singing the lyrics I had written perfectly in tune and tempo with the Aladdin song. I was in awe. She was almost through the whole song when she stopped and said, “I can’t sing the last verse.”
“Why not”, I asked.
“It’s a duet, you have to sing it with me.”, she replied.
So, together we sang:

“A Christmas wish
How can this be?
A baby’s birth
Brings peace on earth
For you and me.”

Without any explanation and with no rehearsal, Judith had brought the vision and potential of my Christmas card to life. As we sang the last verse together, tears of joy were streaming down my face.
Praise God for the miracle of sharing a vision!

In her singing, in connecting with me, Judith had fulfilled the prayer I had written at the end of my Christmas card. I pray it gets fulfilled for you, too.

This season, I pray that you see past the commercial spectacle
that the world touts as Christmas, and discover the promise of
a life embracing the message of Jesus.
I love sharing Christmas with you! Merry Christmas!

Dave Hoag