We were on our way to Alaska on our honeymoon, and Mac was teaching me to drive. We’d left the east coast several days earlier and he had been driving most of the time. Now we were on the lonely stretch halfway between Edmonton and Dawson Creek in the Canadian province of Alberta. We’d hardly seen another vehicle all day. Mac felt too sleepy to drive another mile, so he climbed into the back seat and started rearranging things so he could lie down while I took over the driving.
For a wedding present one of our friends had given us a neat little suitcase with a mirror set into its lid. It was a gift I especially valued. Unknown to me, Mac took a fine wire and anchored it to the frame of the rear windshield, but in the rear view mirror the suitcase looked as though it was resting unsupported on the back of the back seat.
“That suitcase will never stay there,” I said.
“Yes it will,” he answered sleepily.
“Not if I put the brakes on hard, it won’t.”
“It will,” he said, wriggling into a more comfortable position.
Not believing him, I pressed the brake hard. The car skidded off the road onto the loose, sandy gravel of the shoulder parallel to the road, and came to a stop, tipped at a frighteningly sharp angle toward the deep gully that ran alongside. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t think. The only thing in the whole car that hadn’t moved was that suitcase!
But Mac, realizing the seriousness of our situation was all action. “Try to open the door,” he said.
I couldn’t.
Car doors are heavy when they are almost above you instead of beside you, but he managed to push it open. We both climbed out onto the running board of our old Chevy and leaned as far back toward the road as we could, trying to balance the tipping car.
That was a strange place to hold a prayer meeting, but our loving Lord Jesus is very gracious and hears our cries, whatever position we are in.
Our arms were getting tired hanging onto the open door and supporting our bodies’ full weight, so we were very glad to see an old, horse-drawn wagon come lumbering along the road.
“Please get us some help,” we called to the driver over the noise of the wooden wheels on the gravel and the clop, clop, clop of the horse’s feet.
He looked at us as though we were crazy, and passed by on the other side.
We thought we then knew a little of how the half-dead man of Luke 10 felt when the priest and Levite passed by without offering a helping hand. But the Lord was watching over us, and He knew exactly what would answer our need. Hours earlier the Lord had allowed two trailer trucks to start in motion, one in Edmonton and one in Dawson Creek. And just when we needed their help, they met right in front of our car.
The driver traveling east hitched his chain around the body of the car to keep it from tipping over completely, and the driver traveling west hitched his chain onto our front bumper and hauled us back onto the road.
We thanked them as warmly as we could. And when in a couple of minutes they continued on their different ways, we knelt down and thanked the Lord Jesus. How wonderfully He helps us even when it’s our own sin and foolishness that have brought us into a place where we cannot possibly help ourselves. “Even when we were dead in sins, [He] hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.... For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Ephesians 2:5-6, 8-95Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 2:5‑6)
8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8‑9).
ML-09/27/1987