GOD'S CARE

GOD’S CARE

                The year was 1969. I had been drafted into the Viet Nam war in 1968 and had trained as a medic. Our whole class was heading for the battle when a couple of us were selected to serve in a medical experiment in Ft. Detrick Maryland. From Ft. Detrick they assigned us to duty at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C. where we worked most of the time between lab experiments.

                Having been in church all of my life, I was out to see the world and to sow a few wild oats and when local girls started inviting us to their weekend parties… well… we went and believe me Washington D.C.is a party town like no other.

                This particular weekend we had been invited to a party down in Virginia and so we jumped into my friend Frank’s Austin Healy Sprite and headed for Virginia. We drank quite a bit that night along with other favors that flowed so freely in the 1960s. And then at 3 Am, we headed for home, knowing that we would barely have time to get a shower and make it to work on Monday morning.

                So the two of us, along with a girl that asked for a ride with us back to D.C. got into the little two- seater and headed out on a country highway back toward I-95 north. We were going pretty fast and the highway was dark when suddenly we hit an unmarked construction site where they had been laying down new pavement. We hit that abrupt change with a terrific bang that sent our little car airborne.

                I honestly don’t know how far we flew, but life sort of went into slow motion as the car seemed suspended in air for the longest time. The car sort of rotated in mid- air so that when we landed we skidded to a stop on two wheels where for what seemed like an eternity the car balanced perilously as if deciding whether to land on its top or on its wheels. I’m sure that the whole incident lasted only one second, but that elongated second between life and death will forever  be etched in my mind.

                We sat there stunned in the middle of the road. We finally got out of the car and walked around it and back to the ledge in the road, wondering why in the world there were no warning signs and finally we shook it off and headed on to D.C. The Austin Healy is a very small sports car and I remember thinking that if it had gone on its top, the three of us would have been trapped under 1500 pounds of metal with no one in sight for miles. The rag top would have offered no resistance and so there would have been no room for our heads and shoulders between the car and the pavement and I remember sending up a quick prayer of thanks to God for sparing us, but that was not the end of the story.

                A few hours later my friend Frank was heading for work at Walter Reed in his Austin Healy. He stopped at a red light and when the light turned green, he started out when suddenly the entire axle and front wheels rolled back under the car, momentarily raising the front of the car into the air and then dropping it with a thud onto the street.

                In other words, that ledge we had hit only hours earlier had sheared off the 4 bolts that held the front axle in place and we had driven all the way home at 70 plus miles per hour in a car in which the front axle was no longer attached. And I have no doubt that in spite of our foolish ways of youth, God miraculously spared our lives that night.

                Our lesson for this week is called “God knows His Own” and it is based on Psalm 139, which along with Psalm 91 is one of my favorite texts in the Bible. In this Psalm by David it says:

                “My frame was not hidden from Thee when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth. Thine eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Thy book they were all written, the days that were ordained for me when as yet there was not one of them.” Ps. 139:15, 16

                When someone dies an untimely death we often will say, “It was his time.” Or when he is spared from death we will equally say, “It was not His time.” Either way we assign our “fate” to Someone who presides over our lives according to a divine plan.

                God knew that I would not always be as foolish as I was during that period of my life. Like the Prodigal son I was throwing my upbringing to the wind in order to see how the other side lived. And even when I got out of the Army I was not inclined to go back to my past life, but rather to head out with my friend Frank to the “good life” in California. But God intervened and set me on a very different course. While visiting my folks in Texas on my way to my next big adventure, my Dad introduced me to a big loving Teddy Bear of a man named John Thurber.

                John looked beyond my wild exterior and saw something that I couldn’t see at the time. He invited me to sing and to play bass with their traveling Christian youth group… and so began a long journey back from the gates of hell. John Thurber and his brother Wayne were two of the most loving and accepting people I had ever met. They were so proud of us. Every night when we did our concerts the two of them would sit on the front row with tears flowing and big smiles… and I saw in them something of Christianity that I had not seen in quite that way before. It was a vision of love and acceptance. They placed their faith in us in a way that made us not want to betray the love and faith they were showing in us.

                Once we have broken beyond the rigors of religion we discover that our God is a lot like Brothers John and Wayne. God knows everything about us… even better than we know ourselves… and yet He loves us with a passion and zeal that is over the top.

                Jesus described His father’s love in the story of the Prodigal son. There is a point in our lives where we must decide to turn our steps toward home… but God doesn’t leave us to grovel and to come on as a hired servant. Instead He runs out to meet us with outstretched arms and smothering kisses and tears of joy.

                Religion can sometimes paint a picture of a God who sits with arms crossed and a stern look in His eye, waiting for us to prove ourselves worthy of His love. But Jesus painted quite a different picture for us. Everywhere He went on this planet, He sought always to erase the stern unforgiving pictures that men had painted of God and to talk about a Father who loves us beyond all that we can even imagine.

David said: “How precious also are thy thoughts to me, O God! How vast the sum of them. “ (verse 17) Who better to search our inward parts than the One who weaved us together in our mother’s womb?” (Verse 13) and so David threw himself upon the mercy of God saying: “Search me O God and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts; and see if there be any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.” Psalm 139:23, 24

                God knows us far more intimately than we know ourselves. We cannot hide anything from Him for He knows all of our days before we have lived even one of them. God is infinite in a way that goes far beyond all that we can ever imagine. Men try to picture it saying: “He counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.” Ps. 147:4 Trillions of stars, each one of them is known and named by God… likewise the cells of our bodies and the hairs on our heads and the thoughts of our minds.

                Should we not trust Him with our lives? Should we not seek His wisdom… read His Word in awe and wonder? Should we not ask Him for pure love so that we can return to Him that which He hungers for in us? He has imparted His own Spirit to us and washed us in His blood and covered us with His robe of righteousness, so that we, like the prodigal son, can return home without the shame of our sins upon us. God knows His own and He considered eternity with Him something worth dying for.