My husband Craig and I recently experienced God’s missed connections between an ambulance, a text message, and a peach pie. We planned to deliver a pie, but God changed the purpose of our visit.
Every year I buy a crate of perfectly ripe and amazingly sweet peaches. Trucked in fresh from Georgia, the peaches are sold to raise funds for Youth for Christ. As usual, this year’s crop tasted as incredible as their perfect red, orange, and yellow colors looked. After giving out bags of peaches to friends and neighbors, I baked pies.
One pie was for N, my husband’s dear friend who has spent years fighting multiple cancer battles. When my husband Craig visits N, I don’t join them out of respect for their “man time.” But I usually send treats for N and his wife E. Recently, they hosted their kids and families for a week, and Craig had a fishing trip the following week. So we arranged to drop off the pie on a Sunday night—very different timing from Craig’s usual weekday visits.
Slow to get ready, we left fifteen minutes later than what Craig texted E. Pie in hand, we were in no rush as we left our house. We drove, ready to stop by the town where they lived before driving to another town for our dinner reservations. Craig’s phone remained on silent for the drive, so we missed E’s text telling us not to come.
When we arrived, E came to the door asking if we had passed N’s ambulance. Our confused looks told her we hadn’t seen an ambulance or received her text. I handed E the peach pie, which felt irrelevant given the situation. She invited us in and explained how N’s long day of pain led to his uncharacteristic request for an ambulance. N’s absence from the house seemed strange, like a foreshadowing of what was to come.
E remained calm and coherent, but it must have been unsettling to send N to the emergency room. Despite N’s many cancer challenges, he had only taken an ambulance to the hospital once before. This time, N needed emergency help for the unrelenting pain. We offered to take E, but she wanted to drive to the hospital alone. Instead, we prayed for her and N.
Our arrival displayed God’s precise timing: right after the ambulance’s departure but before E left for the emergency room. God also ensured that we didn’t see E’s text, which would have canceled our visit. Only God could orchestrate all these factors to allow us a precious window of prayer time.
The next day, N came home from the hospital. The heart attack he feared never happened, and he went home without chest pain. God truly intervened that day, in N’s life and in ours. We witnessed God’s interventions that defied human planning and explanation. God miraculously used a peach pie, an overlooked text, and a missed ambulance to deliver prayer support. What an amazing God we serve.
