It was an October day in 1959 in Bixby, Oklahoma.  Six-year-old big sister was at school.  Little two-year-old sister was playing in the house.  Mom was also at home working in another room.  Dad was at work.  A carpenter was refinishing the hardwood floors in their old house. 

The carpenter’s wife, accompanied by a five-year-old neighbor, had just arrived to pick him up.  Then it happened.  There was a loud explosion.  When the hot water heater came on, it ignited the freshly sealed hardwood floor and the bucket of sealer that was sitting near the furnace.  Instantly, fire raged in the dining room.

Mother ran out of the back of the house around to the front.  The carpenter, his wife, and the 5-year-old had made it out safely.  The two-year-old, however, was trapped inside.  Mother heard her daughter screaming inside the dining room.  Mother went to the window, ripped off the heavy screen window, threw it aside, and climbed into the smoke-filled room with fire blazing all around.  Huddled in the corner just a couple of feet from the fire was her daughter.  She was trying to shield herself from the fire with her arms. 

Mother ripped off her own skirt and wrapped her daughter in it.  Carrying her, she climbed out of the window.  By this time, Dad had arrived.  Seeing that their daughter was badly burned, they rushed her to the hospital in Broken Arrow.  It wouldn’t be long before she would be rushed to a much larger, better-equipped hospital in Tulsa.

The little two-year-old had suffered terrible burns on her legs up to the middle of her thighs, on her right arm, and the right side of her face.  Over a four-month period in the hospital, the little two-year-old underwent multiple surgeries to place skin grafts on the burn sites.  Doctors even had to take her to surgery in order to change her dressings.

And every day, her mother was by her side.

That little girl, Pam, is now a wife and has a daughter of her own.  She has experienced success as an executive of the Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan.  She still walks with a limp and has scars on her legs and her right hand.  But she is alive and well… and thankful for her loving mother, Helen Parham, who saved her life by pulling her out of the fire.

The love of this mother for her daughter should help us to recognize how much the Heavenly Father loves each one of us...

 “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).  When we were doomed because of our sins, God sent Jesus to our rescue so that we would not perish in the flames of the fires of hell (Ephesians 1:7).  He came so that so we might have eternal life in a glorious place called Heaven (John 14:1-6).

Jesus will save and give eternal life to those who accept His offer of salvation on His terms: placing their faith and trust in Jesus (Acts 16:30-31), turning from sin in repentance (Acts 17:30-31), confessing Jesus before men (Romans 10:9-10), and being baptized (immersed) into Christ for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38).  He will continue to cleanse those who strive to continue to walk in the light of His Word (1 John 1:7).

Jesus has come to save YOU from the fire.  He has something FAR BETTER for you! 

Won’t YOU accept His offer on His terms?

David A. Sargent, Minister

Church of Christ at Creekwood 
1901 Schillinger Rd. S.
Mobile, Alabama  36695

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