What is the meaning of faith?

 

I am sure that many of us can look back through the journey of our lives and see when God has been by our side. For some they may be able to recall troubled times that God has guided them through, for others it could well be a dramatic incident that God obviously wanted them to survive.

 

It is the latter that most readily comes to my mind; not once but twice.

 

What is the meaning of faith?

 

From these two stories my faith has certainly been cemented.

 

As an eighteen year old I was serving an apprenticeship in commercial refrigeration. On this particular occasion I was with a senior engineer working in the refrigeration plant room at a supermarket store. We were changing a three phase condenser fan motor on the bottom of two rows of condensing units. We had switched the unit off and I was cutting through the wires of the faulty fan motor. I was using a pair of blunt uninsulated pliers. I was leaning on the copper pipework and as I chopped through the control circuit wire I felt the violent vibration of alternating current in my hand. Because the pliers were in the palm of my hand, the muscles of my fingers contracted tightly making it impossible to let go.

 

Of course I was experiencing a severe electrical shock. I remember this flash of light which resembled the white flash depicted in comic magazines when the super hero is thumping the villain. This was probably the point where I had whacked my head on the wooden shelving above. At this juncture the thought in my head was that I was a "gonna". My life was at an end. I was accepting my fate and as I did so a tremendous sense of peace came over me. A great weight was being lifted from my shoulders. Calmness was all around me.

 

Suddenly the grip that I had on the pliers didn't seem anywhere near as strong and I realised that I was now able to let go. The engineer that I was working with had grabbed my clothing and pulled me free of the unit. I had survived this shock albeit with burns to my hand and an enormous bump to my forehead. The scars on my hand remain to this day as a reminder that God was on my side and not yet willing to take me to heaven.

 

And one other positive to come from this event; that senior engineer went straight out and bought a decent pair of insulated wire cutters.

 

What is the meaning of faith?

 

Gods' actions in looking after me were once again demonstrated a few years ago when working in Nigeria. I have a great fondness for this country, a great love for its people despite some very hair raising experiences. Up until then my life wasn't overly eventful but over the course of two trips amounting to about fifteen days I encountered more dodgy moments than at any other time in my life. The culmination of these was the trip homewards between Ibadan where I had been working and Lagos airport.

 

I was being chauffeured by Gabriel, a pleasant well built Nigerian, along the Lagos to Ibadan highway. This was a dual carriageway that amounted to two stretches of tarmac that ploughed through the jungle between the two conurbations. There were two sets of toll booths on route, the first set being just five miles to the south of Ibadan. Once past this we were stopped by a police patrol; a common occurrence where policeman would query the legitimacy of the car or driver but would overlook any supposed discrepancies with a few Naira (the local currency) greasing their hands. This policeman, wearing the typical burgundy coloured uniform and brandishing a rifle, looked at me and then said to Gabriel,

 

"French?"

 

"Yeh, yeh French," Gabriel replied.

 

Surprisingly he let us go with no hint of bribery being sort. A few miles down the road Gabriel pulled over to the dusty side of the road.

 

"We got a puncture," he said and we both got out of the car to deal with the problem. Unfortunately when he looked at the spare that was flat too. Next thing I knew he shoved the keys in my hand.

 

"Look after these," he said as he was rolling the two flat tyres to an old, beaten up recovery vehicle fortuitously parked about fifty metres behind us. I watched in disbelief as the recovery vehicle drove off down the road living me by the side of the jungle by myself. Looking down at my mobile phone I could see that there was no signal, no ability to contact anybody if I needed. All I could do was pray that Gabriel would return and soon. I locked myself in the car. My tools and suit case remained in the boot but my paperwork, complete with flight tickets and passport and tucked inside my rucksack, remained inside with me in the foot well behind my seat.

 

Gabriel did return after thirty minutes or so with one tyre repaired which he quickly fitted to the car. The other was repaired a little further down the road at a roadside shack that proudly sported an air compressor and paraded itself as a tyre repair centre.

 

I was relieved now to be on our way and longed for the sight of Boeing 747s and 737s flying out of Lagos airport.

 

However, all the traffic came grinding to a halt as we approached the second set of toll booths about half way along the highway. Slowly but surely we made our way to the booths.

 

"What's happened?" Gabriel enquired as he paid his money over to the attendant.

 

"Highway robbery," he said. "Gunmen just rushed out from the trees, fired their guns and looted the people they shot."

 

Gabriel looked at me and said,

 

"Good job we had that puncture."

 

It was unusual for a highway robbery to occur during daylight hours. Then, it was rumoured that the police and army by day were the highway robbers by night. This was reasoned because these were the only people with access to guns. With the ease at which we were able to pass the police patrol point it occurred to me that perhaps I was the one the bullets were intended for.

 

So was it God that created the puncture to ensure that I was not in the firing line at the time of the highway robbery?

 

What is the meaning of faith?

 

I truly believe that God has looked out for me during these two particular incidences. I'm sure that if I wracked my brain further I could find less dramatic examples of God standing by my side. If everybody was to focus for a while, I'm in no doubt that they too could find the shining examples of Gods presence.

 

How fantastic is that?

 

Terry Norrington

 

www.whatisthemeaningoffaith.com