About Divine Providence
Do you have divine providence in your life, or that of your family members? I DO. Let me explain further, for new or veteran readers of this column.
I was born on a very frontier cattle ranch in far N.W. Colorado, 30 miles from the nearest town. I entered this world to a schoolteacher mother and a cowboy father, with a five-year old brother. We all lived in a small three-room white frame house100 yards away from the Yampa River. My brother and I, slept in the same bedroom with my parents with my grandmother’s quilts to keep us warm with the home heated from a wood and coal stove in the nearby kitchen. We had lamps with an oil base and wicks that burned the oil with long glass chimneys. You can find them in antique stores, and in my basement, along with the wooden ice boxes where we kept a block of ice, harvested in the river during the many -20 below nights, freezing solid ice that was sawed into blocks and stacked on a horse-driven sled and taken to the coal house. The wonderful river was the source of our drinking water gathered daily in a tin bucket. Ice holes had to be cut daily for us, the horses, and cattle to drink. No additives in this clear cold running water.
So it was, we didn’t have any television or phones, and only a radio with a battery from a Denver Montgomery Ward’s catalog. The radio was only used at noon to hear the KOA market reports, Joe Lewis prize fights, and the World Series.
We raised our own food, grass fed beef, bins of potatoes stored in a dirt cellar, along with Ball jars of summer canned fruits and vegetables raised in our World War II award-winning prize garden. My father made rows in the garden with his new Ford tractor purchased after the War ended. At an early age I was instructed how to plant seeds to grow an assortment of vegetables, including corn, carrots, radishes, squash, dill & cucumbers. Being an Irish family, we raised acres of potatoes. In addition, my mother had a small fruit patch, with chicken wire to keep out the critters, where she grew strawberries and boysenberries. The birds were a problem, and the scarecrow didn’t work very well; so the berries were very scarce for the rich milk and cream from our Holstein dairy cow. What a marvelous animal she was; I milked her daily at night after school.
Leading into divine providence was first and foremost, with our remote life, with my mother reading the entire Bible to my brother, and I by lamplight every night near the stove on cold winter nights. I loved the Old Testament stories along with many nursery rhymes she taught us at early ages. I learned a great deal about Jesus and ancient history over several years, absorbing the Bible verses about the scriptures. It made me a believer at an early age.
The entrance of divine providence came into my life early one morning. I had to drive seven miles to U.S. 40, named the Victory Highway, constructed after World War II that ran across America and passed through Denver to Salt Lake, and beyond. I would catch the school bus traveling from Maybell to Craig every morning. At age 15, I was driving our 1946 blue Plymouth sedan at 6:30 a.m. to catch the school bus. A few miles from home I was driving fast on a narrow one-lane dirt road up a very long hill. As I was approaching the crest of the hill, suddenly, a voice told me, “Get over” and a huge Haliburton oil field truck came flying over the top of the hill. The truck would have killed me for sure. That was the beginning of Divine Providence Number l. No explanation, but it made me a believer that God was watching out for me. I have an angel on my shoulder still today.
I’ve had several more incidents, one recently, and I do believe that an angel watches over me. I have overcome death and injuries time and time, again. I believe that our lives are planned out for us, and we can influence our own destiny with choices that we make in our own lives. It is hard to explain, but it is not an accident that I’m publishing this newspaper and still alive today.
Many of us are mourning the death of Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point, USA. His death must have been Divine Providence because the death created a martyrdom, with 100,000 people in Phoenix on Sunday at State Farm stadium, packed with those arriving early to attend the Memorial Service and an overflow crowd outside. The President, Vice President, and the entire cabinet were present for the service. Charlie is now much larger in death than he was in life before his untimely death at age 31. His wife Erica forgave his killer in a very emotional address. I’m not surprised, that’s what Christ would have wanted, and so would Charlie. That brought tears to many eyes in Arizona and around the world.
Not everyone subscribes to religion, or Divine Providence, but for all of us that do, we may find angels on our shoulders. Erica has one on her shoulder right now, it is obvious. Divine Providence has worked once again. Take it, or leave it, this is your life to live. But take it from me, there is such a thing as Divine Providence.