It's 3:30 in the morning. You're sound asleep, but suddenly the light comes on in your room. You open your eyes only to see a stranger standing in your doorway. It sounds like the beginning of a horror movie, but it's exactly what happened to Andy Armstrong of Alexandria, Minnesota—and the stranger in his doorway had just miraculously survived a devastating car accident.
Armstrong had "forgotten to lock a house door" before heading to bed that night; that's how James Sundby had found his way inside, staying inside the house for an unknown amount of time before he came into Armstrong's room. Armstrong (forcefully) told him to leave, and Sundby—with "his face banged up, his sleeves bloodied"—replied, "Oh, man, I'm sorry. I think I'm in the wrong house … I crashed my car." He refused help, however, and left the house (with Armstrong's shoes on).
Checking his house, Armstrong noticed "blood on the kitchen counter and a little bit on the floor." He called the police, who found Sundby in the neighborhood around 20 minutes afterwards.
In the morning, "it was clear what happened: [Sundby had blown] through the stop sign at a T in the road, barreled through a yard, and launched his car off a 35-foot to 40-foot embankment, clearing a span of open water on Lake Le Homme Dieu, before landing on the season's remaining ice." Yet Sundby, who "had no drugs or alcohol in his system and [didn't] remember what happened," was—extraordinarily—alive.
Potential Preaching Angles: The Church; Body of Christ; Outreach; Witnessing; Compassion—Spiritually speaking, people like James Sundby may wander into our lives or into our churches. After profound trauma or hurts, they come into our "house" dazed and confused. Will we be ready to accept them, love them, and bring them to the Great Physician, Jesus?