It was a little past midnight, and Michael, Joy, and I were making our way home by taxi after spending the evening with friends. Suddenly a motorcycle coming from the opposite direction hit the center barrier, flew over our taxi, and landed behind us. The rider was thrown from the motorcycle when it hit the barrier, and he landed in the road directly in front of us. Our taxi driver managed to stop just in time.

We were all dazed for a moment, but quickly realized that the man lying in the street was seriously injured. If we didn’t help him, who would? There were almost no other cars on the road at that time of night.
Then I heard the Lord’s voice in my mind. Move! Do exactly what I tell you to, right now. I’ve always wondered how I would do in a situation like that, so it was wonderfully reassuring to hear the Lord’s voice so clearly.

I heard the Lord’s voice in my mind. “Move! Do exactly what I tell you to, right now!”

I asked Joy and Michael to pray for the man, while I tried to find someone who could call an ambulance. The nearest houses were all dark and surrounded by fences and walls—not easy to get to for help at that late hour—so I tried to stop the next car that drove by. It passed without stopping. So did the next one. Finally a third car came along. By then I was jumping up and down in the middle of the road and yelling for the car to stop. It did, thank God. One of the two men in the car had a cell phone and called for an ambulance. I ran back and joined Michael and Joy, who were hovering over the man on the road, still praying.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so seriously injured, except in movies. Blood was everywhere. The man’s face and one of his legs were badly torn up from having hit the pavement face down and skidding across the road. From the angle the leg was bent at, we were sure it was broken. He had lost a tooth, and his eyes were already black and swollen. We found out later that he had also broken his pelvis. He was conscious but nearly incoherent as he cried out in pain, calling on God in Arabic.
I’m sure it was the Lord who helped me overcome my aversion to blood, pain, and suffering, as I’m normally very sensitive to those things. That I was able to stay calm and think clearly as we tried to help this poor man was in itself a miracle.
Very carefully, I put my handbag under his head and began stroking his head as I prayed and tried to comfort him. “You’re going to be okay. God loves you and Jesus loves you,” I whispered in his ear. “Help is coming. Hold on.” Michael spoke to him in Arabic. The man was obviously in a lot of pain, but gradually got much quieter.
The next 10 or 15 minutes seemed like eternity, waiting for the police and ambulance to come. We knew we shouldn’t try to move him, considering the seriousness of his injuries, and there was very little else we could do for him physically. Pray for him and comfort his spirit, the Lord kept telling us. That’s the most important thing right now. So that’s what we did.
The police arrived first, then the ambulance. When one of the para-medics asked the man his name, he managed to get it out—Nasseem. We also found out what hospital he was being taken to.
The next day we visited Nasseem in the hospital. He was still in critical condition, but the ICU staff let us in to see him. One of Nasseem’s brothers was also there at the time, so we gave him the flowers and inspirational reading material we had brought for Nasseem, to give him later. We had thought Nasseem was unconscious or asleep during that visit, but when Michael touched his arm and said goodbye, Nasseem whispered in English, “Thank you for coming.”
We went back and saw him again a few days later, and spent quite a bit of time with him and his family, who were gathered around his bed. We recounted how we had prayed for Nasseem at the accident scene, and said that we believed God had engineered things so we would be with him at that time. It encouraged his faith when we told him that he had cried out to God, and that we believed God had answered his prayers. He didn’t remember anything about the accident—only riding his motorcycle and waking up the next day in the hospital.
“This has bonded us,” Nasseem’s teary-eyed father told us. “We have to be close friends forever!”
We don’t know all that the Lord did that night to spare Nasseem’s life, but we had prayed for a miracle and believe we got one—two, in fact. Nasseem is alive and recovering well, and God is working another miracle in his heart by helping Nasseem better understand and appreciate His love and mercy.  ¨

Sandra Sanders is a full-time volunteer with the Family International in the Mideast.