A Past Experience

My first blog post will involve an experience I had in the summer of 1992.

I had just graduated from High School and had gotten my first (what other people would call) 'real job,' on a road crew.  We were paving the highway passing through my home town and I was one of the locals brought on to continue the work.  The part of the world where I lived tends to have cold wet winters and hot dry summers, and it was hot.  It wasn't until the past decade that I remember ever having a wet summer.

I cannot remember the exact events that brought about my lack of water on this day, but somehow I wound up on flag duty, standing by myself with no shade (except for the shade my sign and hat provided), no drink, on the open highway, and the crew itself was working several miles away.

I felt like I was going to die, and I felt this strongly enough that I was actively praying to God to get me through this.  Just as I felt like I was about to give out, I saw the ground around me darken as a cloud moved between myself and the sun.  I looked up, and the sky was completely clear, except for one long, skinny cloud that was positioned and shaped perfectly to cast the highway in shade and nothing else.  It seemed to say "Why should I ruin the day for everyone else?" with a smile.  My strength returned and I spent the rest of my shift in relative comfort.

Of coarse a skeptic could easily write this experience off as a hallucination, but if it were, why did it persist for the rest of the shift?