Grace, a high school sophomore at Seminole High School, Seminole, Oklahoma wanted to learn all she could about reptiles. Although she was scared to death of snakes, Grace elected to deal with her fear and go with her biology class on a field trip to nearby Lake Eufaula State Park, Oklahoma to study reptiles. During her search and observation of reptiles, Grace and her friend Pam decided to sit down for a brief moment on a fallen tree to take a breather and observe the behavior of a box turtle feeding nearby. As both teens walked through the dense woods to track the turtle, Pam caused a tree branch to swing striking Grace across the face dislodging a contact lens.
A contact lens, being a small, clear item in a wooded area is nearly impossible to find. Grace and Pam looked and looked hoping they would be able to find that contact lens. Grace was quite a way from her home so that quickly replacing the missing lens was impossible. She did not have her prescription with her so that she would not be able to purchase a replacement either. After a few minutes of having no lens, seeing clearly became a problem for Grace. Then she soon began to experience headaches making her think that going on this field trip might not have been a good decision on her part. So Grace prayed that God would help her find her lost contact lens.
Grace thought her last hope might be to get help from the rest of her classmates. Maybe one of her classmates might be able to find her contact lens. Then she thought there might be a chance that the missing lens might still be in her eye since she was unable to find it near the location where she was struck in the face by the tree branch. Carla, another classmate, offered to check her eye. When Carla did so, she could find no contact lens in Grace’s eye. Before long word that Grace had lost a contact lens spread to the remaining 23 members of the biology class. Once again, Grace quietly prayed to God: “Lord, You know everything and can do anything. Lord, You know where my contact lens is. Please, Lord, could you return my contact lens to me that I might see? Lord, right now my sight is blurred and I am unable to see things clearly. I can’t see well enough to do my work here or help my fellow student with their work either. Thank you Lord for the suffering You have given me at this moment. It has taught me to better appreciate You gifts particularly the gift of sight. Lord, I will accept whatever You decide. Amen.”
Around 2:00 PM in the afternoon, the instructor called the class to begin preparing to load onto the bus so that they could return to Seminole. Just as the class was about to begin boarding the school bus, a member from the botany class from Stuart High School whose biology class was also on a field trip shouted: “Hey, there’s a snake with a contact lens on its head! Man that’s weird! Did anybody out here lose a contact lens by chance? It’s not a poisonous snake. It’s a hognose snake! It’ll play dead if you disturb it.”
The snake brushed along side a dandelion flower leaving Grace’s contact lens on a pedal. It quickly slipped away into the high grassy area of the state park before most of the students saw it.
“WOW! That’s amazing!” responded Pam.
“Haven’t you heard, Pam?”
“How’s that?”
“That God works in strange and mysterious ways. That is, nothing is impossible with God.”
“Come on, Grace! You don’t believe that stuff! God is nothing but a myth. My dad and mom told me that. How do you know that God had anything to do with this? This is just one of those freaky things—a weird accident.”
“Oh, no, Pam. It’s not a freaky accident. God is in control of any and everything. This incident proves to me, anyway, that God can and will use any of His creations to answer our prayer requests—even a snake!!”
Read more articles by Stephen A. Peterson or search for articles on the same topic or others.
