Calamities, Crashes and the Collisions of Life

by Linda Grabeman

 

The road curved and there it was.

Unmoving.

Unexpected.

IN.MY.LANE.

A hulking yellow harvester, slashing and swiping down limbs and underbrush from the roadside,

not six car-lengths in front of me. 

Big problem.

It gets worse.

In the other lane, a large truck barrels toward me.

No orange cones warned me, no road crews directed traffic.  Just a sharp turn and massive vehicles glaring at me on either side of a two-lane southern country road.

My mental grocery list for my son vanished.

So did every other normal thought.

Heaven crossed my mind.

But not for long.

There was not enough time.

I could only react. I hit the brakes so hard I thought my foot would smash through the floorboard.

And I screamed. Oh, did I scream.

My two-word prayer, “LORD JESUS!”

I’ve checked the collision calculations.

At my speed and the proximity of the road machinery, I had seven seconds to impact.

If God had tarried even five seconds, He would have welcomed me into eternity.

I stopped just short of the cab on the back of that monstrous tree-limb-eating beast, and the car directly behind me stopped just clear of my rear fender.

We each sat there for a few minutes, taking in what could have happened, and what did happen.

 

I hope he thanked God. 

I couldn’t stop.

  God refreshed my memory yet again.

He is there.

He is there in the wrecks. In the disasters. In the pile-ups.

Do you need to be reminded too?

What do you do when your life resembles a collision?

Where do you go when you’ve taken a hit?

Relationships rear-ended.

Friendships fender-bendered.

Serenity side-swiped.

Don’t laugh when you read my next sentence. I’m dead serious.

Head to Exodus. 

Yeah, I know, not generally your best-loved book of the Bible.

It’s been called the “The Story of the Bible in Two Verses.”

Think CliffsNotes.

Spark Notes.

Celestial cheat sheet.

In the second book of this love letter to us, God Almighty describes Himself in two verses.

Allow my personal paraphrase of Exodus 3:7-8

“I have seen your heartache, 

I have heard your prayers,

I have known your pain,

And I’m coming, to help you.”

Do you need to hear that right now?

Maybe you are terrified of that calamity around the next sharp curve.

Maybe you stand breathless at the mangled mess of a recent life-collision.

God sees.

And He came to sit right beside you.

To call you “Child”. To allow you to vent, cry or just be held.

Will you let Him draw you close? Comfort you? Whisper His love for you?

So often we run everywhere else before we run to Him.

Please don’t.

Let God love you right where you are.

My dear pastor, Thad, said this recently: 

 

“Without God, there is only PALLIATIVE CARE.

With God, there is HEALING.

And when God does what only God can do,

it ALWAYS ends up in WORSHIP.”

Amen, AMEN.