Faith Story - Jake Matthews

Recently I received an email from Milton Slater. Milton wrote about a man from Norfolk, Virginia and how on Sept 11th, 2003, TWO YEARS AFTER THE TRAGEDIES OF 9/11/2001, he called a local radio station.

His name was Robert Matthews. Robert reported that a few weeks before Sept. 11th, that he and his wife found out they were going to have their first child. She planned a trip out to California to visit her sister. On our way to the airport, they prayed that God would grant her a safe trip. Shortly after Robert said 'amen,' they both heard a loud pop and the car shook violently. By the time they had stopped and replaced a blown out tire they had missed her flight. Shortly after they returned home, they received a call from Robert's father who was retired NYFD. He asked what his daughter-in-law's flight number was. He informed Robert that the flight she missed was the one that crashed into the southern tower. He also shared that he was going to help. He said, "This is not something I can't just sit by for; I have to do something."

Robert was concerned for his father's safety, of course, but more because his father had never given his life to Christ.

Before he got off of the phone, he said, "take good care of my grandchild." Those were the last words Robert ever heard his father say. He died while helping in the rescue effort. After receiving word that his father had died, Robert's joy over the safety of his wife quickly became anger. He was angry at God, at his father, and at himself.

Several months later Robert reports that he was sitting at home with his wife and son, when there was a knock on the door. When Robert opened the door he saw a couple with a small child. The man looked at him and asked, "Was your father's name Jake Matthews. When Robert said, '"Yes", the visitor quickly grabbed his hand and said, "I never got the chance to meet your father, but it is an honor to meet his son."

He explained to Robert that his wife had worked in the World Trade Center and had been trapped inside after the attack. She was pregnant and had been caught under debris. He then explained that Jake Matthews had been the one to find his wife and free her. He then said to Robert, "my wife has something else to tell you." His wife then told Robert that while his father worked to free her, she talked to him and led him to faith in Christ. To this good news Robert shared, "Now I know that when I get to Heaven, my father will be standing beside Jesus to welcome me, and that you will be able to thank him yourselves." To make the event even more exciting the couple shared that when their baby was born, they named him Jacob Matthew, in honor of the man who gave his life so that a mother and baby could live.

Scriptural Guide: "Give thanks to the Lord for He is good. His love endures Forever." Psalm 136:1

Faith Story - Bishop Fulton Sheen

Recently, through one of the religious broadcast networks, I was able to reach back into the past to the 1970's and listened to Bishop Fulton Sheen, a Roman Catholic priest, who was one of the first leaders of the Church to use television to share hope. He was seeking to bring a message of hope to what he called "a people caught up in the down cycle of life." He was speaking to a generation who had recently experienced World War I and World War II, and who were facing a future darkened by the mushroom cloud of the spread of atomic weapons. He called our attention to our grandparents who gave us hope because they were the people of the 19th century, a people of hope, living in one of the up cycles of life. The 19th century was one of many great inventions and heroes who refused to flounder in the ashes and wreckage of the moment and stood on something solid, called faith, and used the fallen stones of their civilization to build new homes and factories, and places of worship. A great missionary movement began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A cry went out from the youth, "Let us win the world to Christ in this generation." Young people, caught again the spirit of hope that was experienced in the eighteenth century when Francis Asbury, a 26 year old young man from England, landed on the shores of North America to lead and expand a Methodist movement that found thousands of young men eager to answer the call of spiritually leading the pioneers of hope on the frontier. Hope spread by providing "preaching places' and Christian communities, in nearly every community in this new land.

Bishop Sheen said these were people of hope, not because life was easy, but because they refused to be satisfied with just the answers of "how", but were determined to find answers to the questions of "Why." In the 1950's through the 1970's Bishop Sheen called the post war generation to seek from their faith the answer to the "why" question. He closed his message by pointing to Jesus Christ who lived and died victoriously because He knew why He was here up this earth. "If you seek to save your life, you will lose life, but if you give your life for my sake and the gospel, you will find life"(Matthew 10:39).