This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

"Who Am I, O Lord God?"

After God had led David to the throne of Israel, David wanted to build a temple for worship of God. God sent Nathan to tell him no, but gave him a much greater promise instead: from his house would come the Messiah.

"Then went King David in and sat before the Lord, and he said: 'Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that Thou hast brought me hitherto? And this was yet a small thing in Thy sight, O Lord God; but Thous hast spoken also of Thy servant's house for a great while to come.' . . ." (2 Samuel 7.18-19)

Exactly two weeks ago today, my family was in an auto accident, and our car was totalled. I was so angry. I had to quite consciously refrain from any critical remarks to Anna--as she had been driving. After all, it was hardly something she intended to do. What do they call these things? Accidents, not "on-purpose-ents." (She even said to me later that day, "Well you haven't yelled at me yet." I pointed out to her that doing so would hardly accomplish anything helpful, and in any case, she didn't mean to do it, and it wasn't as though she had a habit of driving recklessly.)

I tried as hard as I could to try to see behind the outward circumstances and find there some evidence of what God was doing. I didn't come up with much.

But neither did I have long to wait for it to become clear in what ways God would bless and take care of us in the midst of these difficult circumstances.

The very first bit of evidence was the willingness of one of the parishioners at All Saints to come and pick us--and all our baby gear--up from the accident site. Pat Kushiner is an angel. And she did much to try to bring us cheer as we drove home.

Next came Blaise and Lynn Kueck, who drove us to services one Sunday. Not to mention Michael and Todd giving me rides home from the men's group.

Then came an anonymous cash gift (of some significant proportions) from someone in the parish through the pastoral discretionary fund. (When Father handed me the envelope, I didn't have to ask what was in it. I just broke down and wept.)

Next came the offer for the second part-time job at the library where I work. This effectively puts me at full-time benefits status. There's a lot of blessing there. (Oh, and the summer ethics course I'm teaching.)

Then came as almost perfect a used vehicle as you could imagine. Sold to us by the first owner, it was the same manufacturing year as our now-deceased Saturn, with only 64K+ miles, new tires and battery, towing package, CD player (we've never had one of those), fold-in mirrors (great for our narrow one-way street we live on), and needing only routine 60K maintenance (tranny service, fluid flush, spark wires, etc.). Not cheap, of course, but not unexpected.

Next was the amount of total loss the insurance company gave us for the Saturn. The retail was for about 2K, but ours was high mileage (140K), so we expected much less. Instead, we got more than double what we thought we would get for the car.

The owner's asking price for the car was $500 under what the bank would loan us, and we eventually got the owner down to $1500 under her original asking price.

But all that almost hit a snag when we hit the bank. We have great credit--in fact, the interest my credit union offered me was only a half point above their best rate for used cars--but with Anna no longer working our debt-income ratio looked horrible. But God put us with a loan specialist who was willing to work with us, and through some careful questioning was able to "make the numbers work."

So as of last night, we are the grateful owners of a new vehicle.

So, through one totalled car, God blessed us with no injuries, the outpouring of love from a parish of which we are not formally members, a generous gift and other financial blessings, and a new car.

In less than two weeks.

This hardly is the same as being promised to be the ancestor of the Messiah. But I'm with David. All I can say is, "Who am I, O Lord God?"

Posted by Clifton at June 17, 2004 06:22 AM | TrackBack