Effects of a Car Accident Healed through Prayer

Uplifting ideas Paul expresses in the Bible provide comfort after a head-on car crash.

By Clifford S. Foerster

Categories: Health, Loving and Forgiving, Paul

Bible characters often learned some scientific truths about their relationship to their creator and how understanding these spiritual truths could affect their experience. I am grateful they were unselfish enough to share their insights, for I have been directly benefited by the thoughts they shared. One of these individuals was Paul, the Apostle who took Christianity to the Gentiles.

Paul shares some of his insight and conviction in a letter to the Romans:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:35-39)

To me, Paul was stating a spiritual fact about man (the individual described in Genesis 1: 26, 27) and this man's inseparable relationship to God, his maker. I think Paul was also bringing out a main theme of The Bible: to show how spiritual power is far superior to material systems. The facts that Paul expressed were very helpful to me in healing the effects of an accident that happened to me in Junior High School.

A neighbor had made arrangements to take several of the neighborhood children to see a baseball game of the San Antonio Missions, a farm club for the St. Louis Browns. I was included in the group and was very excited to be able to go. A block from our home, a car coming from the opposite direction swerved into our lane. We were in a head-on collision. I was in the front seat and was thrown through the windshield. Seat belts had not been thought of in those days.

My parents quickly arrived on the scene. They assured the neighbor that they did not hold him responsible, had no regrets about allowing me to go, and neither did they resent the driver of the other car who was clearly under the influence of alcohol. A cut nose and lip and scratches were some of the visible signs. No broken bones! My parents took me home as soon as they could. They called someone to pray for me. We turned to the comforting fact that Paul expressed: nothing can separate us from God and from the love of Christ. The power of the Christ is supreme!

We prayed and sang hymns from our church hymnal. The cuts were cleaned; and though the cut on the nose was deep and part of the upper lip was cut off, the bleeding stopped quickly, and the cut closed. The lip filled in, and within several days there was no sign of having been thrown through the windshield.

This healing, along with others that I have had since then, have shown me the value of understanding the spiritual facts and meanings of The Bible and the effectiveness of these truths. They remind me of what Jesus said:

… If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.(John 8:31, 32)

This freedom is worth working for and sharing with others. It requires effort on our part, effort to continue in Jesus' word. And what a wonderful blessing comes with systematic effort!