Young boy claims he visited heaven, saw Jesus prior to making miraculous recovery as doctors prepared to declare him brain-dead

A 13-year-old Alabama boy who miraculously recovered after doctors declared him brain-dead and were set to harvest his organs to donate to five other children, said he was in Heaven walking with Jesus and a sibling who died before he was born.

"I saw a dark male figure with a beard," the teenager, Trenton McKinley, told CBN Wednesday. "He held my hand as I walked through a field. I was holding a baby in my arm. My mom told me she lost a boy from a miscarriage before I was born. I know it was my brother."

McKinley's mother, Jennifer Reindl, who has been singing praises to God and sharing her story since her son's miraculous turnaround, said she continues sharing her story because she wants to change lives.

Trenton McKinley, 13, before and after the accident that temporarily left him brain dead.

"I hope our story changes lives and am thankful for all the prayers and kind words. I am forever thankful to the Lord and out of gratitude will speak in the Lord's favor and as a witness to his miracle ... my hopes are that our story brings hope to any mother out there facing such odds ... from one mother to another mother I send love and prayer. Happy Mother's Day and God bless you all," Reindl wrote in a statement on Facebook Wednesday.

Two months ago, according Fox 10, McKinley was riding in a small utility trailer being pulled by a dune buggy for children when his friend pressed on the brakes suddenly, causing the trailer to flip. The teenager got caught in the trailer as it flipped after he threw his friend's 4-year-old niece into the grass to save her.

"I hit the concrete and the trailer landed on top of my head. After that, I don't remember anything," McKinley told Fox10.

Reindl told the network her son had seven skull fractures and died for about 15 minutes. Doctors did not expect a recovery to celebrate.

"All I saw was a stretcher with his feet hanging out. He was dead a total of 15 minutes," Reindl said while fighting back tears. "When he came back, they said he would never be normal again. They told me the oxidation (oxygen deprivation) problems would be so bad to his brain, that he would be a vegetable if he even made it."

Her son was on life support and barely breathing for several days so she decided with his father to sign documents allowing the donation of his organs to five waiting children.

"His eyes were solid black and dry and I knew he would not hesitate to save five more lives," Reindl told CBN.

The day before doctors planned to shut off his life support, McKinley started recovering.

"The next day I got a call ... they canceled the final brain wave test ... right before they hooked him up his hand moved, then his feet ... so they looked at his eyes and they were back ... he had blue eyes ... now they are green with small white specks like glitter ... they say when you look upon God ... pigment changes ... and my baby was in Heaven for a whole day ... he is a miracle," Reindl said.

GLORY TO GOD!!!

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We really are family: The power of Christian connectedness

Sister Sledge clearly knew they were on to a good thing. Connecting with family – past and present is a big and booming business all over the world. In the USA, genealogy is the second most popular hobby after gardening. Here in the UK, connecting with family, past and present generates multiple internet sites, books, TV shows and sell out national events in the NEC and Alexandra Palace, such as 'Family Tree Live – an amazing family history experience'. Clearly our culture cares about connecting.

We are family: not just biologically but spiritually.

AJ Jacob, author of It's all relative, attempted to pull together the world's largest family reunion and world's largest family photo recently – ambitiously hoping to reunite 4,500 family members past and present. The idea of the world family tree, he says, gives him a profound sense of belonging to something larger than himself. 'It's the ultimate social network and it has to be worth making these connections – it may even hasten world peace.'

Why are people across the globe so into connecting with family, past and present?

Anne-Marie Kramer, a sociologist from Warwick University and author of Genealogy and Kinship says genealogy allows people to 'personalise the past' while connecting with the wider family in the present is important to most people's sense of self. 'The crux of it is a need to feel rooted and connected.'

The hugely popular BBC1 show Who do you think you are? allows celebrities to delve into their family history to uncover secrets and surprises from their past. The show has provided some golden moments, such as Jeremy Paxman dissolving into tears as he learnt of the Salvation Army providing shelter and a lifeline for his destitute grandmother; Boris Johnson clocking he is related to the royal families of Europe; Sunetra Sarker discovering she is related to Ghandi, and probably the most surprising of all – Danny Dyer realising he was a direct descendant of Edward the Third. His was one of my favourite responses by a mile. He shook his head in stunned disbelief and repeated the words 'I can't be...I can't be...me, a boy from Canning Town, Custom House, and THIS is my blood line. I think I need a moment.'

It made me think. I've heard it said that 'Church is not somewhere you go to, it's a family you belong to.' Have you or I ever experienced that WOW moment as we realise the mind-blowing, world changing spiritual family we are part of?

We know family terminology runs throughout the Bible. We are familiar with the idea that God calls us his children and every follower of Jesus is part of one big globe-embracing, history-spanning spiritual family, with Jesus himself saying, 'Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother' (Mark 3:35).

But if we are honest, do we really feel, and more importantly, act like we are one big family? And how strong is our sense of 'belonging' to it, in all its global breadth and historic depth?

My brother bought my kids the brilliant book 'Everyone a child should know.' It shares the life-stories of 52 inspiring Christians – one for every week of the year. There are the usual suspects – Charles Wesley, Spurgeon, Martin Luther and Billy Graham. But there are also social activists Rosa Parks, William Wilberforce and George Muller. Artists and creatives Rembrandt, CS Lewis and Bach. Argula von Grumbach, an advocate for struggling Christians, and George Washington Carver, a genius inventor who used peanuts to help the poor.

With the passing of Billy Graham it struck me that not one of the 52 are still living. I looked for the follow up book 'Everyone a child should know – who are still alive and kicking', but couldn't find it.

I thought of the incredible Christians, some on our doorstep, some further afield, who are alive and well and still in the world-changing family business right now. I started to feel a real sense of urgency to share their stories with my own children, and kind of accidentally started an blog which was a Living Advent Calendar, where each day of Advent you could open a door to uncover an inspiring life of a person opening doors of love, hope and transformation for others. It amazed me how easy it was to fill every day of Advent with ordinary people who, fuelled by their faith, are doing extraordinary things. I loved that my children were excited as they discovered the new life story each day.

Today in Cambodia, our brother Chom No and his inspiring family are helping vulnerable families escape trafficking and exploitation. Today in Tegucigalpa our sister Jesse is helping to break the cycle of poverty for families living and working in the toxic squalor city of the city rubbish dump. Today in Kampala, our sister Immy is caring for vulnerable children in the pre-school she set up and runs with her brilliant team. Today in Belfast, Joanne is running the Lagan Dragons Boat Club for Breast Cancer Survivors. Ordinary people just like us, but living extraordinary lives.

Our global family is amazing. What a spiritual family tree we have. Wouldn't it be amazing if we and our children could have that Danny Dyer WOW moment on a regular basis as we explore and engage with the incredible, world-changing, light-into-darkness, hope-into-despair family we belong to.?

Ann Voskampf's brilliant resource The Jesse Tree illuminates the significance and wonder of the family tree of Jesus in a totally fresh way. My kids' realisation that the prostitute Rahab, the adulterer and murderer David, the disobedient Solomon and the liar Jacob are part of the family line of Jesus, and that they too are part of his spiritual family was an incredible epiphany for them. God chooses and uses real people with real flaws, real needs, real quirks to carry out his amazing purposes. Let's share their stories, their struggles and sacrifice, their faith and their flaws, to create a deeper sense of belonging to an amazing global family which spans the generations. So that we, and our children could know that we follow in the footsteps not only of the biblical heroes of faith, but of ordinary men, women and children who were poets, painters, musicians, carpenters, entrepreneurs, creative writers, dancers, artists, hymn writers, evangelists, reformers, politicians, and preachers.

Could we shift the next generation's aspirational horizons by creating a strong sense of belonging to a global family tree connecting us with Wilberforce, with Bonhoffer, with Carver, with Aylward, with Liddell, but also with the hidden heroes of our world today like Chom No, Immy, Jesse and Joanne?

Knowing who we are connected to reminds us that no matter how insignificant we feel, we have an important place in the world, giving us the 'roots and wings' we long for.

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ThyKingdomCome: Why should we do evangelism?

Today sees the beginning of Thy Kingdom Come, the third annual prayer event launched as an initiative of the archbishops of Canterbury and York. It's been astonishingly successful as a way of uniting Christians from all denominations and traditions in prayer. But prayer, after all, is what Christians do, and we don't need much encouragement to do it.

What's different about this enterprise, between Ascension and Pentecost, is that it's focused specifically on prayer for conversions. Yes: Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, Pentecostals, New Churches and all shades in between, even those traditionally lukewarm about evangelism, are praying for more people to become Christians.

Christians around the world are praying 'Thy Kingdom Come'.

 

Some, no doubt, are motivated by the dread of approaching extinction. Some denominations, and some individual congregations, are not doing well. They see the time coming when they'll have to close their doors for good, and they are afraid. That might not be the best motive, but let's be honest.

A far better motive is to think, 'We have something that's worth sharing with the world. Let's pray that others will find it through us.' But the faith has been bruised and battered in recent years. It's been under intellectual assault from the New Atheists (they're a bit quieter nowadays, actually); it's lost credibility because of horrific child abuse scandals; it's competing in a markeplace of activities in which Sunday, for all too many people, is just another day. For many Christians, there's a crisis of confidence: do we still have a message that we're comfortable sharing? And Thy Kingdom Come is, at least in part, about pushing back against that and saying, 'Yes' to God: aligning ourselves with his purposes for the world and becoming the answers to our own prayers.

Here are three reasons why we should pray with confidence for conversions.

1. Because Jesus is true

There's a poem by John Betjeman which tends to appear at Christmas. It paints a picture of an idyllic traditional festive season, complete with holly, tinsel, family gatherings and gifts – 'Bath salts and inexpensive scent/And hideous tie so kindly meant'. But it concludes with the stunning statement that nothing at all 'Can with this single Truth compare –/ That God was man in Palestine/ And lives today in bread and wine.'

If we Christians are sensible, we'll be respectful of other faiths. All of the major religions contain deep wisdom. Properly practised, all of them make people live better. The fact that we have our own faith doesn't mean that we have to be dismissive of or antagonistic toward things that other people believe.

But Christians believe something remarkable: that 'God was man' in Palestine. That, in Betjeman's words, 'The Maker of the stars and sea' became 'a Child on earth for me'.

As John says in his Gospel: 'The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth' (1:14).

The astonishing claim made by the Christian Church is that in Christ, God himself became visible and tangible. He contained himself in a human being. As Paul says, 'in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form' (Colossians 1:9). When we see Christ, we see God. What we know of God is interpreted and defined by Christ.

As truth claims go, they don't come any bigger than that. And the task of the Church is to say, 'If you are serious about wanting to know how to live well, and if you want to be sure that your life has an eternal significance, this is where to come.'

2. Because church is good for us
We don't always think so. Famously, CS Lewis in his Screwtape Letters has his senior devil advising his young acolyte Wormwood that if he really wants to put his 'patient' off church he should get him to notice the neighbours he generally avoids: 'Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous.'

But church is more than that.

Church in its essence is a new community of people who have a special relationship with Christ: who are 'in' him, as Paul repeatedly says.

It's a community where we learn a completely different way of life. We learn that to be really happy and complete, we have to turn away from striving to fulfil our own natural desires. Instead, we let ourselves be shaped by loving, attentive relationships to others, all in the context of loving attentiveness to God. And astonishingly, we find that instead of Christianity narrowing our horizons, stifling our individuality and forcing us to a dead conformity, it liberates us. In the slow, years-long process of discipleship, we're moulded into better people: kinder, more understanding, more forgiving and more generous – and more Christ-like.

3. Because Jesus people make a difference
A few years ago, in 2009, there was an advertising blitz by atheist campaigners. Comedian Ariane Sherine had the idea in response to Christian advertisements on London buses. With support from the British Humanist Association and Richard Dawkins, they wanted to raise £5,500 to put slogans on 30 buses in London for a month. In the end they raised more than £150,000 and the campaign ran all over the UK.

The slogan was: 'There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.' I'm not sure it converted many people to atheism. But I thought it was self-indulgent and unambitious. The best slogan they could come up with in the absence of God was 'enjoy your life' and this in a world full of hunger, disease, warfare and want.

'Stop worrying and enjoy your life'?

Actually, most Christians do. But we're driven, too, by a knowledge that the world as it is isn't the world that God meant it to be.

Jesus didn't leave the poor unfed or the sick unhealed. His mission was to body, mind and spirit. Believing in God doesn't make us worry. It doesn't stop us enjoying life. But it means we cannot shut our eyes to the needs of the world.

Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest who died in Auschwitz after volunteering to take the place of a man sentenced to be starved to death, once wrote: 'The most deadly poison of our time is indifference.'

I believe we should be evangelical about calling people out of their indifference and into Christ's service.

'Thy Kingdom Come' is the most powerful prayer imaginable, because it encompasses so much else. It is a rallying-cry, a call to join God's own mission. Evangelism has nothing to do with self-preservation – it's an offer of life to the world.

 

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Ecclesiastes 9: 4 (Four) biblical rules for enjoying life (and glorifying God)

'Enjoy all the days of this meaningless life'

 

Rule 1: Enjoy what God has approved

Solomon counsels that we should be content with our situation, take our opportunities, work hard and be grateful to God for what he has given us in life. The believer in God gives herself to a contented and joyful life. The basis of this is that God has already approved what you do. We are not struggling for acceptance. We receive contentment as God's gift. Go eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.

He mentions white garments and anointing oil (verse 8) because they were things that made life a lot more comfortable in such a hot climate. Food, clothing and ointment were seen as the essentials of life. What is being spoken of here is organic life – or real food. It's the difference between real food and junk food. People want real life. In today's society we have food, full schedules, easy get-in get-out relationships, etc. This is not how we should live in the light of eternity.

Rule 2: Enjoy your meals (verse 7). The average Jewish family began the day with an early snack and then had a light meal ('brunch') sometime between 10 am and noon. They didn't eat together again until after sunset. When their work was done they gathered for the main meal of the day. It consisted largely of bread and wine, perhaps milk and cheese, with a few vegetables and fruit in season, and sometimes fish. Meat was expensive and was served only on special occasions. It was a simple meal that was designed to nourish both the body and the soul. Eating together ('breaking bread') was a communal act of friendship and commitment. Rosario Butterfield was a lesbian feminist professor at Syracuse University before she became a Christian. It was the hospitality of a Reformed Presbyterian pastor and his wife, that made the radical difference to her. Her latest book (The Gospel Comes With a House Key), understandably lauds what is called the ordinary gift of hospitality. One of the simplest things we could do to improve family life is to learn to eat together. Eating together is a great way of strengthening the family, creating friendships, establishing fellowship and bearing witness to the love of Christ. Maybe in our hectic world we need to slow down and enjoy our meals, so that we can enjoy one another and enjoy Christ.

Perhaps Solomon was reflecting on his own experience: 'Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred' (Proverbs 15:17); 'Better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting, with strife' (Proverbs 17:1).

Perhaps the oil and the white robes refer to special occasions. Then Solomon is saying, enjoy every occasion – or make every occasion a special enjoyable one.

Rule 3: Enjoy your partner

'Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life at God has given you under the sun' (verse 9) is hardly the verse you expect to see on an anniversary card. The demands of marriage include the giving of affection – 'whom you love'. 'Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her' (Ephesians 5:25). Marriage is God's gift, a gift that we are to enjoy, not endure. 'Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral' (Hebrews 13:4) . The marriage that is spoken of is affectionate, lifelong and monogamous. I think a key here is commitment. It is not a cheap throwaway thing. It is incredible the number of men (and women) who just walk away. Did Solomon live up to this? No. But perhaps he was writing this in later life and repenting?

Rule 4: Enjoy your work

Life is to be active and energetic, practical and skilful. Because of our contentment, comfort and companionship we throw ourselves into life. The pessimist cannot enjoy life and his emptiness cannot be filled up in retrospect. In Sheol, earthly things such as activity, plans and wisdom, all cease. 'As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no-one can work' (John 9:4).

So we work with all our might. Whatever your hand finds to do means what is available and within one's ability. Today is the day of opportunity. There is no opportunity in the grave. That is one of the reasons we live life to the full. We work with all our might – we do it with all our strength and our very best.
At one level all the above reads as though Solomon really was the forerunner of Jordan Peterson 3,000 years ago – offering wise principles of living! But he is doing much more than that, because the theme of the whole book that 'under the sun' (ie without God), this is all meaningless. Rules for life and exhortations to contentment, comfort and companionship are all very well – but how do we get them?

The Westminster Shorter Catechism famously asks, 'What is man's chief end?' and answers, 'Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever'. It is when we get our relationship with God sorted that we can then get on with enjoying life. How do we prepare for death? Jesus provides the answer. 'Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"' (John 11:25-26). Being secure in Christ means we can face death without fear and so live our lifes with joy, to the glory of God our creator.

Warren Wiersbe neatly sums it all up: 'If we fear God and walk by faith we will not try to escape or merely endure life. We will enjoy life and receive it happily as a gift from the Lord.'

 

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Why giving is good: 3 ways to find joy in financial sacrifice

The collection. A time of offering. Your tithe. The contemporary church has euphemisms aplenty for the awkward necessity otherwise known as financial giving. And perhaps they betray just that: an odd ambivalence about our money and what we're meant to do with it. No minister wants to be seen as a manipulator, and no believer (hopefully) wishes to be a tight-fisted scrooge. But our wallets are close to our hearts, and a heart that truly loves to give does not always come easy. Nonetheless, despite all our fears, giving is good for us.

But bad news is easy to find; churches can also talk about giving in a way that graceful, inspiring and ultimately a source of joy. Here are three ways it can do just that.

1. Integrity

Dishonesty in finance can come easily, greed being an obvious motive in any situation. Obviously then, integrity and a commitment to the truth should be central to any church inviting financial support. Not only does the truth come out eventually, but you betray the entire cause of faith if honesty evades you: the truth by contrast, sets people free. So ministries shouldn't pretend they're on the desperate brink of collapse if they don't receive your inheritance by tomorrow, when they're really quite fine. It should also be clear to those giving how their money is spent, and thankfully in many churches this kind of public transparency is the norm.

But honesty can also mean being truthful about difficult needs, about the lack of stability, and the serious reliance on charitable support. Some parishioners may not know, or assume their church has a wealth of resources when the opposite is true. People can forget that institutions rely, in part, on their participation to exist. When they know there's a serious need that they can serve, they might just wish you told them sooner.

2. Challenge

The idea of 'challenging' anyone on their money-spending probably seems galling to most, knowing how prone we are to hypocrisy. But a challenge can be good, and Jesus made numerous dramatic claims about discipleship and money. He said, 'Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.' A pastor preaching at my church recently drew on these words in a provocative talk on giving; he summarised Christ's teaching as 'follow the money': your bank balance will, for better or worse, reveal what you value.

Most know, though don't often confront the fact that storing up financial treasure never brings one contentment. Psychological 'happiness' studies confirm it. Rather, in Jesus' words 'it is better to give than to receive' (Acts 20:35), and again as my pastor said: 'your spiritual need to give to the church is far greater than the church's need to receive'.

3. Trust

Ultimately the problem of giving comes down to trust: leaders and congregations trusting each other, yes, but really both being able to trust God. To trust that he really does provide what humanity needs, though not always what it may want. It is in such situations when the things we really rely on – like our financial security – are at risk that we see what the 'trust' in faith requires. It is far more than some distant intellectual assent to an idea that we'll find out about for sure when we die. It's an earthy, costly, tough call to risk and let go, but therein to find what true provision means.

Talk is cheap on a matter such as this, and the spectre of preachy hypocrisy looms large. The real way to learn about giving, is of course, to do it. Lent, as many have learned, is a profound opportunity for this practical service. Unlike Christmas, we may not get physical presents in return for our sacrifice, but can receive something deeper, more transformative: the chance to become the 'cheerful giver' of whom Paul spoke, one who meets with joy the needs of those without, and so meets their deepest needs within.

God bless you.

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Birds of the Bible: How they teach spiritual truth

On National Bird Day, it's lovely to think of our feathered friends and perhaps put some extra peanuts in the garden feeder. We aren't inclined to read very much into their habits, though the sight of two swans making that heart shape with their necks always gets photographers snapping.

In the Bible, though, birds are often mentioned because of some spiritual or poetical significance. In Psalm 102:6 they are symbols of loneliness: 'I resemble a pelican of the wilderness; I have become like an owl of the waste places.' In Job 39:26 it's part of the poet's defence of God's wisdom: 'Does the hawk take flight by your wisdom, and spread its wings towards the south?'

In Psalm 84:3 a bird is an emblem of God's hospitality: 'The bird also has found a house, And the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even your altars, O Lordof hosts, my King and my God.'

Sometimes a bird is a metaphor for God's power: 'You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself' (Exodus 19:4); or it might symbolise God's care: 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling' (Matthew 23:37). Sometimes the image of a bird is used to poke fun at pretentiousness: 'The strutting rooster, the male goat also, and a king when his army is with him' (Proverbs 30:31).

On the other hand, sometimes a bird is just a bird – a useful source of food, like the quails in the wilderness, or a dove that might be sacrificed in the Temple.

Of all the birds in the Bible, the safest were probably the ones regarded as ritually unclean and not to be eaten. It's not clear why all these birds were included, though as some were carrion-eaters they might have ingested unclean food themselves, but in Leviticus 11:13-19 there is a long list: 'These are the birds you are to regard as unclean and not eat because they are unclean: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, the red kite, any kind of black kite, any kind of raven, the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, the little owl, the cormorant, the great owl, the white owl, the desert owl, the osprey, the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.' There's a similar list in Deuteronomy 14: 12-17.

It's said there are sermons in stones; there are sermons in birds, too. John Stott, the great Bible teacher and pastor, was fond of birds and wrote The Birds Our Teachers: Biblical lessons from a life-long bird-watcher. The title is from Martin Luther's exhortation from the Sermon on the Mount: 'Let the little birds be your theologians'.

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