It was G.K. Chesterton who observed, “the most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen!”
If you were watching online or live on television Saturday, July the 13 late in the afternoon as former President Donald Trump spoke in Butler Pennsylvania, you can say that you witnessed a miracle.
Interestingly, it was another president to be, a young Col. George Washington in a ferocious battle in 1755 during the French and Indian War in what is now Pennsylvania, not far from Butler, Pennsylvania, where he was the only officer not shot off his horse and he found numerous bullet holes in his jacket, yet he was unscathed. He found bullet fragments in his hair, yet he was not harmed.
Suzanne Bowdy, in a Washington Stand article, quotes Speaker Mike Johnson as saying, “God spared his life. I mean, it was a miracle. We all saw it. Everyone saw it. It’s hard to deny.”
Ironically, Johnson made these statements after very nearly losing his own sons last year after a visit to Mar-a-Lago… “In Johnson’s telling, Will, who was 13, was drowning; 18-year-old Jack, prepared to give up his own life, tried to push his brother back to the surface. A parasailer happened to spot Will’s head from above. He hurried back to shore and alerted the lifeguards, who went out on jet skis to bring the boys in. Johnson arrived at the beach to find medical personnel hovering over his sons, pumping their chests…”
The Atlantic wrote this spring in the first public telling of the near-loss.
“President Trump heard about it somehow, miraculously, this never made the news,’ Johnson recalled. The two got on the phone.
“He was just so moved by the idea that we almost lost them, and we talked about it at great length. And we talked about the faith aspect of that, because he knows that I believe that, you know — that God spared the lives of my sons. That’s how I understand those events, and we talked about that.”
Johnson continued: “And he said, he repeated back to me and said, ‘God — God saved your sons’ lives.’”
Eight months later, the former president has experienced the touch of divine providence for himself, and the young speaker who wondered where those conversations about God would go has a very poignant answer.
“He said … ‘God has given me a chance here — and that is to unify the country.’ [Those are] his words, not mine. So, I’m really excited to see how he articulates that and how we meet it out.”
God’s hand is still seen in the lives of men.
Charles Coffin, an early writer of history textbooks on our national history before the early 1900s, said “Notice that while the oppressors have carried out their plans in history there were other forces silently at work which in time undermined their plans as if a divine hand were directing the counter plan, whoever peruses the story of liberty without recognizing this feature will fail to fully understand the meaning of history”
If you don’t understand what God has been up to you won’t get the truth of history.”
We in America used to study and teach history with careful attention to the overarching hand of God at work on behalf of men.
For example, during the struggle with Great Britain, the colonies had virtually no chance of winning a war against England short of God’s miraculous intervention. And that intervention seems to have happened.
In fact, both American and British observers of that time recorded their conviction that God had sided with the colonies against the British Empire.
This event, which took place at the end of the war, is but one instance. The French had become our allies and an opportunity arose to trap British General Cornwallis in Virginia.
But to do so meant that Washington had to march an army of 7,000 men all the way from New York to Virginia; a French army had to land somewhere along the coast and find its way to meet Washington and the French fleet had to keep the English from sending any reinforcements.
All of this had to be done in complete secrecy, without the English suspecting a thing.
According to one historian, “The junction in Virginia had to be coordinated by two different national commands separated across an ocean without benefit of telephone, telegraph or wireless. That this was carried out without a fault seems accountable only by a series of miracles.”
In fact, the ending of the war at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781 is actually referred to by some historians as the “Miraculous Convergence.”
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if our children and grandchildren could learn these truths today?
Remember David’s words, “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side— let Israel now say— if it had not been the Lord who was on our side when people rose up against us, then they would have swallowed us up alive… Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”
Miracles still happen, and we can Thank God for that!

Tim Throckmorton is the national director of Family Resource Council’s Community Impact Teams.