"He sends rain on the just and the unjust..." (and sometimes miraculously)

 

[The following is an excerpt from an unusual memoir I've been writing. Most of it is stories of how I have failed to love God supremely in my life and how He has lovingly smashed my idols one by one. But it also contains stories about his amazing provision and protection for me, like this one from the summer of 1989, when I moved west to attend seminary...]

I have to tell you about what happened on my four-day drive out to California from Pennsylvania…

I made the trip in a little aqua-colored Ford Escort that was already old and beat up before I drove it 3000 miles in the August heat, and it would take a miracle for it to survive the trip. But fortunately God is a God of miracles, as they say, and I saw his power at work in an amazing way on my trip. My girlfriend Jill had given me Scripture verse cards to look at each day and memorize the passage on them. It was Isaiah 43:1-3…

      But now thus says the Lord,

he who created you, O Jacob,
    he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
    I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
    and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
    and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

 

Jill had broken the second verse into two parts so I could read and memorize a verse on each day of my four-day journey, and I did do that every day, so that I knew the entire passage by the end of the trip. I also wrote a song on the last day containing all the words in the passage. I was celebrating on that last day because of the miracle that happened on the third day, which was spent entirely in the deserted stretch of land that I think they call “the high plains.” I’m not sure of that, or even what states that route stretches through, but I remember that I passed through the Rocky Mountains and slept the second night in Colorado. On that third day it was extremely hot and the sun beat down for hours on my little old car laden with too much weight with all my stuff. The air conditioning system overheated and broke, leaving me sweating like a pig, and I was expecting the whole engine to do the same at any time, which made me sweat even more out of fear, because there was nothing out there except signs that said “Next Gas 200 Miles,” or something like that. I swear that I even started seeing steam or smoke coming out from under the hood in front of me. I truly thought I would be stranded in the middle of nowhere at any moment, but I kept moving forward because I wasn’t sure what else to do.

              

And I prayed. And worked on memorizing the third Scripture card, which said, “When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” When I first pulled out that card there was not a cloud in the sky, and believe me, I could see very far out there. But I remember thinking, Only by God’s power will this car’s engine not burn up and strand me out here. 

In the afternoon, when I was sure the car could not stand the heat any longer, I caught sight of a lone cloud formation far in the distance ahead of me. It occurred to me that if somehow rain could fall on the car, the engine might cool down enough to continue functioning through the rest of the day. But I am about as far from a scientist or mechanic as anyone can get, and the cloud formation was far off to the right, seemingly moving away from where my car was headed. As time passed, however, the clouds did actually start to grow closer to my path, and while the sun was still at its height and scorching everything else in that forsaken no man’s land, this man was not forsaken because the clouds ended up right on top of me and rained on my car for about an hour! It was a small cloud formation, as I said, but it seemed to me that it actually changed direction and went the same way my car was going, just long enough to cool it off. After the rain ended and the clouds receded into the distance behind me, I only had a couple hours of sun left and I made it to my next hotel stop, where I and the car could rest for the night.

The Scripture for the day had come true very literally in my case—the fire of the sun had not burned or consumed me as it could have, because my Lord was with me. And the fact that he allowed the air conditioning to break was meaningful to me as well. It was like he was saying, “I haven’t promised you comfort, but I have promised to be with you and preserve you from destruction.” 

When I arrived at my new home in California, I took the Escort to a mechanic who asked me, after looking at the engine, “Did you say you drove this car from Pennsylvania?”

“Yes.” 

“No you didn’t.”

“What do you mean?” 

“The engine block is cracked. There’s no way it could have made it that far.”

I told him about my experience and the Savior who brought me through. He was the first person in California that I shared the Gospel with.