The Turning Point

With the assurance of Heaven and eternal life, I've also come to a place where I can trust in God's plan for my life here in this world.

I was twenty five years old when I received a phone call that my mother had been taken to a hospital as the victim of a car crash. Trusting that medicine, doctors and hospitals would somehow achieve some degree of restitution to her health, little by little over the period of a month her condition deteriorated to the point where our prayers were quickly becoming our only hope. Then one day, the worst happened and my brother, my young sisters and myself were informed by my dad that Mom had passed away. She was 52 years old. Blindsided by this unforeseen tragedy, the purpose of my life and more importantly the purposes of my two teenage sisters were changed and bordered on hopelessness. It seemed that all my prayers of hope had been expended on the last few days and hours of my mother's life and now there was nothing left for me to have confidence in God. Although there was a deep seated trust in Jesus that could never go away since the time when I accepted Jesus as my Savior at eleven years old, the lack of an answer to all my prayers for my mother caused me to doubt my worthiness to ask Jesus anything. I had certainly been remiss to spiritual things during my college years and the grief and remorse mixed in with all my other feelings to keep me in a state of constant questioning and confusion. Then two months after the funeral I had made a trip to visit with my grandmother and on the return trip home, it started to rain and with a cold rain so hard the road ahead was barely visible. It was late at night, probably after ten o'clock when I almost ran into a car stranded on the side of the road. There were no lights on the car and the occupants were black children, boys and girls aged about my same age but several years younger. They were waving at me with profuse animation wanting me to stop and give assistance. I slowed, but was still reeling from the near miss of plowing straight into their non-reflective mass and without the benefit of time to think, I intended to keep on driving. Two hundred yards later, though, I realized that upon this almost abandoned road I may be their only hope of rescue for quite some time. So I stopped, put the car in reverse and pulled up even with them to offer a ride to one of them. As I rolled down my window part way I said, "May I give someone a ride for help." Immediately, the oldest boy made a dash to the passenger side of my car and as he opened the door, the whole entourage of black children crammed themselves into my car. It occurred to me to object, but by this time compassion had overtaken me, and I simply asked where could I take them? They said in unison that they didn't live far if I would take them home. I was probably only twenty miles from Selma, Alabama where the civil rights marches began some seven or eight years ago, and I was beginning to feel uneasy with this crowd of young but strong black children needing a car to get around in. Soon they told me to turn left into a gravel road and said to keep on going and they would give me more directions. The rain was unrelenting and even as the travel was slow on the slippery dirt and gravel roadbed, I was thinking that we had traveled close to a mile when one of them said, "I see it. Turn at that next road." Barely through the slopping windshield wipers, I also saw the narrow passage and my heart sunk as I realized the possibility that I was being taken off to be hijacked. After swallowing hard, I took stock of myself and decided that would again trust in the providence of God and follow whatever directions these children gave to me, regardless of the consequences. Two hundred yards further on, however, we came to a yard strewn with once valuable debris but no longer useful, and beyond the yard, a rundown unpainted house of sorts. Lights were on inside the house and I barely made it to a stop until, the passenger door was flung open and almost in one motion, all the occupants of my car exited with a splash of feet in the mud and a mad dash for the protection of their house. Only the oldest paused in the rain to ask if I would be able to find my way out to the highway. I was uncertain, but I assured him I would be fine. Once back at the highway, I was almost in tears with the continued grief of family lost, but also brimming tears of joy that God had delivered me. At least he wasn't lost.

I know I have disappointed the Holy Spirit many times during my life, and mostly as a result of pride, but it is so comforting to know that God first loved me and that his forgiveness is so humbling that I know through belief in the person of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, his death, burial and resurrection, that I will have eternal life with him forever.