When your heart stops and the medical professionals cannot revive you, you are dead. Teenager Sam Berko, a Missouri City, Texas, native, was rock climbing at his gym when this happened to him.

The scene his mother, Jennifer Berko, described went like this: “He climbed to the top of the wall, rang the bell, as we were told, and then his body went limp, and it looked like he was either playing around or passed out. They weren’t quite sure and when they realized he was unresponsive, they lowered him slowly.”

Sammy was rushed to the hospital where emergency medical technicians and doctors performed continual CPR. After two hours, the doctors and EMTs had to tell Sammy’s parents, “He’s gone.”

For the Berkos, it was reliving a nightmare. Three years previously, Sammy’s brother Frankie died from a genetic mutation in his heart — one that, unbeknownst to their parents, Sammy had as well. This is what caused Sammy’s heart to stop.

Jennifer then started talking to her son and praying. She recounts: “I started talking to him, just telling him how much I love him and sorry that we didn’t know how to save him. Suddenly, as I started praying, my husband said, ‘Oh my gosh, he’s moving.’”

From the depths of sadness to the light of hope, Sammy’s parents called back his doctors who ran back and began to give Sammy further medical aid.

Sammy had been dead, his heart stopped, no oxygen pumping for two hours. There was a very real possibility that Sammy, though alive, would suffer brain injury from lack of oxygen.

However, the next part of the miracle is that Sammy only suffered some physical injuries and some short-term memory loss. He doesn’t remember that day except for waking up in the hospital.

Jennifer had this to say about the reactions of the medical professionals: “These are professionals who have been doing this their entire lives, who have seen the worst of the worst. Each and every one of them afterward came to us and said that they have never seen anything like this before. Ever. Never had they ever pronounced somebody and suddenly they came back five minutes later.”

Sammy Berko is alive and it is a miracle.

It is so heartening to hear of an amazing work of Providence like this; to be reminded again and again that we as humans are not the ones in control. Sammy’s story is reminiscent of the Buffalo Bill’s Damar Hamlin, who suffered a cardiac arrest after a collision. His miracle was not as long in coming, but Hamlin too after reviving and suffering minimal negative ramifications pointed his fans to God. On that note, Damar Hamlin is now cleared by several doctors to go back to playing football for the Bills.

God can bring dead people back to life both literally and spiritually. What a cause for celebration.