Car Trouble!

Something was wrong!  The pulsating sound of car noise suddenly went silent at the stop light. "The car died!" I declared incredulously.

"No, it didn't!" my husband responded, but he turned the key just the same.  The car tried to start, but failed. We were in the middle of the main street in town on a Tuesday afternoon. Thankfully, it wasn't time for the adjacent school to be out, or the traffic might have been worse.  Only an occasional car passed us, seemingly taking no notice of our distress.

"Call Greg!" Howard instructed tersely.  We were only one street over from our son's house, but when I reached him he was across town at a farm supply store.  He promised he would be right there and drove up a few minutes later.  (We live in a small town.)

Just then a man in a pickup truck stopped beside us and asked if we needed a jump.  Howard waved him on, saying he was trying to reach roadside service.  Suddenly a strange young man was helping Greg push our car to the curb.  Leaving Howard with the disabled car, Greg offered to take me home. A little later, he and our grandson were able to push the car to their house to check it out.

Finally Howard came home driving Greg's car.  He told me our mechanically-inclined son was still trying to determine the problem, and they would work on it tomorrow.  The car had been very reliable and had never given us any trouble since we bought it new almost nine years ago.  We couldn't help but think of the many cross-country trips we have taken in it and thanked God that nothing like that had ever happened away from home!

"Who was the young man with you who helped you push the car?" I asked Greg on the drive home, to which he shrugged and said, "I have no idea. I'd never seen him before!"  I had just assumed he came with him, since I had seen no pedestrian in the area.  In the distraction of the moment, I didn't notice him leave.  He seemed to disappear as quickly as he showed up.

We are trusting God that our car will be fixed quickly and without too much expense.  We could see God's hand  in the whole ordeal, from the fact that it happened close to home on a slow-traffic afternoon near our son's house and on an absolutely beautiful day, unlike the frigid temperatures of the day before and the single digits of this morning, to last night's snow being gone from the streets in the warm sunshine, not to mention the mysterious stranger.

The Bible says in Psalm 34:19, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the Lord delivers them out of them all."  Praise the Lord!