What would you do if you were "electrocuted" and lost much of your left arm and leg?

Too many people would become bitter -- self-absorbed and mad at the world (or, worse, at God). In so doing, they would defeat themselves. If you're Robert Morales Jr. of Austin, Texas, you become closer to God -- and as a result become a miracle-worker.

It was back in 1974 that Morales, in his twenties, was employed as an assistant lineman when he grabbed a live wire and hung on a tower as 7,200 volts surged through him.

While he was dangling on that pole, as he came within a whisker of dying, he saw the past ten years of his life flash in front of him, like on a television, a life that was distant from God.

He didn't like what he saw. Immediately the young man had repented, calling out to God and turning his life over to Him.

“I knew I wasn’t right with the Lord,” he says. “I wasn’t going to Mass. I was away from the sacraments. I was searching for the things of this world, not the things of His world. I was going to die there, and so I called out to the Lord and gave myself totally to Him. I said, let it be His Will whether I live or die.

"The next thing I knew there was like an explosion," continues Morales. "It threw me backwards and my feet went into the braces that make like a cross up there on the post. Despite how I was living, I always wore some kind of religious medal, and I had one of St. Martin de Porres. It came out of my shirt and hit me in the forehead. You can picture me upside-down with this hitting me in the forehead!”

The backward motion and Morale’s new position, with a piece of the tower brace now between his feet, broke the surge.

The current stopped going through his body. And despite what he then had to go through -- more than a dozen operations, and the amputations -- he felt reborn.

To this day, he thanks God for the accident, even though his left hand, forearm, and much of a leg below the knee had to be amputated. He thanks God -- as we all should this week!

Returning home from the doctor more than two months after the “horrible” event, his wife noticed that a wide, perfectly formed cross had appeared on the back rest of his wheelchair. A second image was also present. It resembled a dove. No one could fathom how they got there.

What for most would be a tragedy became the happiest day of Morales’s life – and the start of a lay ministry. Today the former electrical worker beams with the love of Jesus and has given up all to open a little chapel called Los Milagros de Cristo, “The Miracles of Christ.” Some are reportedly healed there. A picture of Jesus has allegedly exuded blood on three occasions. We submit that for cautious discernment (and as always urge prayer before heading to any place of "miracles").

When another lay evangelist visited the chapel, she said that a person with serious leukemia underwent visible change.

“What we witnessed on our second visit was a man with leukemia that was in the last stages,” she says. “We don't know if it was a temporary or a permanent healing. But his skin was the most yellow-green that I have ever witnessed, and I have seen several cases. He did not come seeking prayers or healing. He came just to join the small group who gathered there to pray. One of us felt the Lord was saying we must pray for him and as we did the yellow-green color began to drain from his skin. You could actually see it drain. I’ve never seen anything like it. Within minutes his skin color returned to normal and his strength began to return.”

[resources: The Day Will Come]

11/23/04