Miracle of the Black Oil Truck, one icy Sunday

A Christian miracle story with a question: Would you believe a heating oil delivery would be made in the depths of winter snow on a Sunday, when all oil companies were closed, and no one could be called for help?

Frosty, white, and frozen:  photo by Bill Hunt.

   Sudden winter weather returned in April with below freezing temperatures. Fresh snow fell in heavy silent white flakes covering everything. The windows frosted thick with “finger painted” crystallized ice designs.

Mary and I unexpectedly found ourselves in deep winter in her home, Lowville, in rural Upstate New York. Newly arrived, we rented an old Victorian house for our four little children under five, including our tiny baby. We lived very simply on very little money. God took care of us as we eagerly waited to hear his next directions to ministry.

Early that Sunday morning before church, I checked our furnace oil tank gauge. My heart jumped. The needle sat on zero. We were about to run out of heat in the house at any moment. Outdoors, everything appeared frosty, white, and frozen. 

 

My wife, Mary, with serious eyes, reminded me

the oil companies were closed on Sundays.

In the battle between good and evil, we can find ourselves tempted in hard places, difficult situations, which could ultimately reveal the hidden purposes of God.

Being new in town, I phoned repeatedly every oil company in the county, hoping to find a responding emergency number, but no answer came. Not even the telephone operator could make a suggestion. Not a single area oil company could be contacted.

Secretly, so Mary wouldn't see my fear, I stopped and prayed for God's help at the icy window panes at the side dining room window. The thought of my wife and four children, with the baby, sitting in a cold freezing house severely gripped my heart. I breathed scared.

“Father, help us....”

Less than one hour after my trembling prayer, a black oil tank truck with no external markings drove up the plowed road and parked adjacent to that dining room window!

In amazement, I quickly scratched a peek-hole in the icy frost with my fingernails and watched. An elderly driver dressed in worn workman's overhauls and a tattered, charcoal coat with a plaid lining got out, dragged his black truck hose to our pipe, and refueled the house tank. I couldn't believe my eyes.

Was he an angel? Where did that oil truck come from? There were no markings.

How did he know we were out of oil? Who told him? On a Sunday!

When he finished, the driver got back into his truck, closed the door, and drove away.

He left before I could get my own coat on and rush out the front door to question him.

He left no tank invoice statement, anywhere!

We never received a bill for that delivery. We never knew how the strange oil delivery came to pass.

– Bill Hunt

Q. Have you ever received an unexplained miracle? Tell us in the Comment Box....

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