Pothole Evangelism

The first year of our marriage my husband and I lived in Ithaca, New York. Our families were five hours away in the New York City area, and because Jim was deep into his graduate studies, I often made the trip to visit family without him. I worked for the university, so it was easy to find company for my ride, one or more students who would gladly pay toward gas money to avoid having to take the bus home for a weekend visit. It was in the late winter of that year that I found myself driving a student to New York City.

John was a personable, talkative undergraduate. I had not known him before this trip, and we had a pleasant ride down to the city where I dropped him off. Two days later, I picked him up for the return trip upstate. Several hours into the trip, I heard this gentle voice in my head, one that I've learned to recognize over the years as a prompting from God. I usually know it's God and not me talking to myself because the sense of urging I have is to do something that I wouldn't think of doing on my own and often something I'd rather not do at all. What I was hearing this time was, “Talk to him about Me...”

Steering conversations into a particular direction is not my strong suit. My introverted self was rather enjoying John's talkative nature on the long drive, letting him carry the bulk of the conversational responsibilities. But I did sense a certain urgency that I was to engage John in a spiritual conversation. I spent the next hour unsuccessfully attempting to turn our chatter toward anything that I could introduce the word “God” into. Finally, I said, “Lord, if You want me to talk to John about You, You are going to have to give me an opening so big that I can't help but fall into it.”

I was at that moment driving on an interstate in the middle of Pennsylvania in a year the potholes were so big and numerous they eventually became an election issue. I had no sooner asked God for that big conversational opening when my car ran over what looked like two dark patches of blacktop. The resulting thud told me, no, those were, in fact, really, really big potholes. Out of the corner of my eye I saw both of my right side hub caps rolling off into the twilight. I pulled over to the side of the road, and John, sitting in the front passenger seat, got out to take a look at the damage. As he opened the door, I could hear the unmistakable hissing sound, and looking straight ahead at my dashboard, I visually observed the car slowing sinking to the right. John stuck his head back into the car, and with a horrified look on his face, informed me that I had two flat tires. I got out to take a look and saw that the potholes had been so deep both rims had hit and bent away from the tires.

Now this was back in the day when many cars still had snow tires on in the winter that were exchanged for regular tires come the spring. Jim and I would buy tires with rims so we could change and rotate the wheels ourselves. We were living in a small apartment, so we kept the regular tires, complete with rims, in the trunk of the car, along with the spare. When John informed me of the two flats, I told him, not a problem - I have three spares in the trunk, on rims. He then apologetically told me that he didn't know how to change a tire. (He just a short time earlier told me that one of the interesting things about growing up in the city was that no one in his family had a driver's license or owned a car...) I told him again, not a problem - I knew how to change flats. He offered to be the muscle if I would talk him through the process, and it wasn't long before we were back on the road. I got off at the next exit to have the underside of the car checked for damage. The mechanic put the car up on the lift, but found nothing more than a few minor scratches on the oil pan. We headed back to the interstate. John was quiet the first few minutes back on the road and then he turned to me and asked, “Do you ever think that sometimes there might be a God or someone like that looking out for you?” And there it was - the opening I had prayed for...so big that I couldn't help but fall into it...

We spent the next two hours talking about God and spiritual matters. John had lots of questions. His mother had recently gotten involved with Scientology, and while he could understand her spiritual searching, he somehow felt she was looking in the wrong place. I shared with him my experiences in searching and finding God in my own life. I told him about groups back on campus that would encourage and help him find a relationship with a God who loved him enough to provide for him in unexpected ways – like getting a ride from a girl who knew how to change flats and kept three spares in her trunk. I never saw John again after I dropped him off, though I did pray for him for a long time after that weekend.

Many years have passed since that road trip. I still get a sense of God's urging at times to talk to someone about Him. I still don't always think of doing it on my own, or have a deep desire to want to do it at all. And I'm not really much better at steering conversations in a particular direction. But I have become quick to pray - “Lord, You are going to have to give me an opening so big that I can't help but fall into it.” When I finally realized God doesn't always answer that prayer the way He did the first time I prayed it on that road in Pennsylvania, that the answer doesn't always involve potholes and flat tires, I was free to see the other ways God would work through my prayer. Ultimately, it is God who reveals Himself to the people seeking Him, drawing them into a relationship with Him. But He does use us to speak into others' lives, often whether or not we feel willing or naturally equipped to do a good job of it. Asking God for the opportunity, the opening big enough, wide enough and deep enough that we can't help but fall into it, starts positive movement in the direction of talking about Him to others. Suddenly, conversations get steered in the right direction. People hear and see the gospel in operation in another person's life, often growing hungry to see it in their own lives. Even one's own desire to see people come to know God grows. That graciously large, prayed-for opening, sometimes scary as it approaches, becomes a place of blessing for all – even when it looks big enough to swallow a car...

Concerning all acts of initiative or creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. - William Hutchinson Murray, mountain climber

 

If Memory Serves Me Right...

There was a day last week when the outside thermometer read -12°. All day long. So long, in fact, I believed the thermometer had broken in the cold. When I got up the next morning, it read -4°, so I knew it was still working, but that it was, indeed, very cold out. No records were broken, though, for lowest temperature, or for longest cold streak, or for lowest highs. Yet I had only to turn on the news or pick up a paper to be drawn into the hype of the cold spell and think it had never been this cold in the Midwest in January. Why do we become so obsessed with an infrequent, yet not rare, meteorological event? Because we have such short memories...

I recently read a book I found very entertaining for just this reason. Some of the subjects of this non-fiction piece were a famous celebrity who had to fight off mobs of media wherever he went; an exceptional athlete who had a substance abuse problem and a voracious sexual appetite; a president who accomplished very little as president, loved taking vacations and was shrouded by whispers of sexual scandal; a group of financial wizards whose greed brings down Wall Street; terrorist attacks on American soil. The book also contained stories of bad decisions in the auto industry, this country's obsession with the motion picture industry, and historic Mississippi River flooding. The book? - One Summer – 1927 by Bill Bryson. The players? - Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Calvin Coolidge, anarchists Sacco and Venzetti, Henry Ford...

The book is a very informative picture of the summer of 1927 in America, told in the entertaining manner that Bill Bryson brings to all his writing. And I did enjoy it for its information and humor, but what I really loved about the book was this unintentional and oddly comforting reminder - there is nothing – NOTHING - new under the sun!

I think we all have a tendency to look around ourselves and believe all we know in our immediate surroundings – the government, the economy, natural disasters, crime, media manipulation, even people and the temperature – are growing worse than “ever before”. The truth is, we just don't remember the “ever before”. Solomon, writing in the book of Ecclesiastes, nailed it with this good reminder:

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. (Ecclesiastes 1:9,10)

We forget what we, as human beings living in this glorious, yet fallen world, are capable of, both the good and the bad. We forget the eternal now of the One who created and redeemed us and this glorious world, the One Who sees the summer of 1927 and the January of 2014 in one glance and is neither surprised nor overwhelmed by anything that He observes, neither the cold temperature or the outrageous behavior of us human beings. We need to be reminded that the everlasting Father is unchanging, but we and this world, like the old ad campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle claimed, stay the same but keep changing. We just forget over time our sameness in the midst of our perceived changes. We can take both comfort and hope in the fact the eternal God remembers who we are even if we don't. We can trust Him with the past, the future and even the “ever before”...

Tomorrow is another day only up to a point. - Annie Dillard