My youth group only did the Thirty Hour Famine once while I was a part of it though they have done it since. We spent the night at the church after an evening of activities that were meant to focus our minds on God and on why we were doing this. One of the tasks we did that night before we went to bed was Drive-by-Prayers, some kind of Christian version of Ding-Dong-Ditch. We would pray for the people of the house in the car. Then the person that knew the person and suggested the house would sneak to the front door and put a door hanger that said who we were, what we were doing it, and why we were doing it. Then they would ring the doorbell and try to get back to the vehicle before the door was open. If they failed, they had to go inside and pray with the family.
I suggested the B's house since I was friends with both of the girls. We prayed and I did a crouched walk over to the door. I rang the doorbell and then I began to run back to the car. But they had turned the car around in their parking area and were waiting on the other side of the road from me. Without paying attention to the road at all, I began to run across the road to the car.
The B's lived on a hilly and curvy road, like many of the other roads in area. The speed limit was low, but people went fast since it led to 422. There was only a semi-bright street lamp near their house that barely did anything.
I started to run across the road and I stopped. Another vehicle car, truck, van, I don't know passed right in front of me, maybe a foot away. It was there and it was gone. I doubled over taking in a shuddery gasp of air I was screaming on the inside and ran back to the car after checking the road. I may never know what made me stop I saw the lights in the corner of my eyes. Instincts had me stopping. An angel of the Lord stepped in front of me and said, "No! Not yet!" but I got in the car, laughing uncontrollably Why was I laughing? This wasn't funny. Everyone else in the car was a bit shaky though they may have been reassured by my laughter though it may have frightened my youth leader further. We continued the activity with the only incident being that they almost left me behind at my aunt's house.
Ann Voskamp talks in her book, One
Thousand Gifts, about when her seven year old son needed surgery on his
hand due to a farming accident. At one
point, she talks to her brother, John, about an Amish family who lost a boy
about the same time in a farming accident
“’The
family accepts. God meant it this way.’
I
shake my head, shake off the disbelief, shake off this weight pressing hard on the chest.
They
can whisper it in the dead boy’s house too?
God’s grace, God’s grace.”
It was God’s grace that I walked away from that house. And I was so thankful to God that I
could. But could I still have been
thankful if I hadn’t walked away? If I
ended up in the hospital for however long trying to heal? Would my family have been able to think of
God’s grace if the sight of those trees and the people in the car waving at me
and a flash of headlights had been the last thing I had seen on this earth? What of God’s grace then?
I will never know what would have happened that night if I
hadn’t stopped. I know that the car was
going over 40mph most sources say that
over 80% of crashes into pedestrians at that speed is fateful and I think that
the car was going closer to 50 and I know that I worship the God of
miracles. But I also know that good
people die every day, even at young ages.
God’s grace may not say we will get through every life
changing and life threatening incident unscathed. But it does say that he will be with us, no
matter what happens. It does help us to praise him, even while we
cry. It helps us to put one foot in
front of the other as we continue to try to move through it. It helps us to get back up again after we
fall. We can get through life and
struggles without God’s grace, but once you have tasted it, why would you ever
want to?
(792 words)
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