Because of a bad cold, I had stayed in the house for a couple of days and was getting restless. I asked my wife, “Honey, how would you like to go for a drive?”
“That would be nice,” she answered. “Let’s pick up Aunt Helen. She’d enjoy getting out for a while too.”
The children were happy to go too, so the five of us climbed into the car, picked up Aunt Helen and headed for the mountains. Later that afternoon, as we drove up the curvy mountain road, the sky clouded over and it began to rain.
“Maybe we ought to head for home,” I said, and I began to look for a place where I could turn the car around. However, the narrow road had been blasted out of the mountain, and there were high walls of rock on both sides and almost no shoulder. We kept driving, looking for a turn-around spot.
Soon we came to the end of the pavement and the road had only a clay surface, now made very slick by the heavy rain. Finally, we slid down a hill to a wider place where we could turn around, but there was no way I could steer the car on the wet clay. In a matter of seconds we found ourselves in the ditch. I tried to drive the car out, but I only managed to make deep ruts.
My wife and I gathered some branches and whatever we could find to fill in the ruts and give the car some traction, but it was no use. We tried pushing, but that didn’t help either. All we were doing was getting muddier and wetter by the minute.
Not only was it raining steadily, but it was beginning to get dark and it was also getting cold. I felt so sick I could hardly stand up, and I began to worry what I was going to do for my family during the night if we couldn’t get out. Finally I said, “Let’s get back in the car and cry to the Lord. It’s all we can do.”
The children quieted down at once when we got back in, and we all prayed earnestly that the Lord would help us out of our distress. We’d hardly finished praying when we looked up and saw two 4-wheel-drive trucks driving toward us. Across the front of each in large letters was the word “RESCUE.” It seemed as though the Lord Jesus had just been waiting for us to turn to Him so He could send us the help we needed so badly.
God wants us to trust in the Lord Jesus first for salvation from our sins and then to depend on Him to take care of us in every circumstance of our lives. We can think of the letters of the word “RESCUE” as standing for:
Rest
Entirely on the
Saviour.
Come
Unto Him in
Every situation.
The first truck hitched a big chain on our back bumper, and the other hitched its chain onto the front to steady the car. Together they pulled us backwards up the hill. I was at the wheel in the car but I couldn’t stop it from slipping sideways into the ditch. Each time it was pulled out our car was scratched a bit more. By the time we got to the top of the hill, our car was a big mess.
But we were safe, and how we thanked God for our rescue! It made me think of the verses in Psalm 40:23, “He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God.” We certainly praised Him that night for a very real rescue. It was a rescue none of us will ever forget, another proof that our loving God hears and answers our prayers. “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me” (Psalm 50:1515And call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. (Psalm 50:15)).
ML-03/17/1996