Life Matters – A God Moment

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1983

My choir director issued a challenge to us at practice on Sunday afternoon: Pay attention to the ‘God moments’ in your life this week. A half hour later, on an unseasonably warm Sunday evening, my family and I went to look at a 1966 Mustang for sale 40 miles away.

The Mustang was a father-and-son project that began 15 years prior. The duo had logged countless hours together refurbishing and rebuilding the piece of machinery that was now for sale. The son, newly married, decided to sell the Mustang to pay for a down payment on his first house. His father, who had labored alongside his son on the project, was present to sanction to sale. My own husband and son stood next to the Mustang looking over its sleek body at the first father and son who had restored the car and painted it a fitting viper yellow. Four men of various ages circled the vehicle with a sort of reverence like seekers who had discovered a holy grail. So began the customary kicking of tires and grunting under the hood at belts and plugs and gizmos. Car-speak terms were exchanged and the four men cast long, appreciative looks at the sunny Mustang in their midst.

Not even the bare honesty of the sellers diminished the value of the car in the eyes of my son who eyed the vehicle hungrily, hoping to make the Mustang his first car. “The tires are shot, the emergency brake sticks like a bugger and the brakes really need to be replaced,” the sellers said. “Hang onto the wheel when you stop suddenly because the brakes pull hard to the right and a 1966 Mustang doesn’t have power steering.”

My husband made an offer and an odd look crossed the seller’s face. “That’s the exact amount I need for a down payment on my house,” he said. A half hour later, with the sun setting on an unseasonably warm Sunday evening, my daughter and I drove back toward home keeping a comfortable distance behind our men-folk driving the brilliant yellow Mustang in front of us.

Our vehicles crested a small hill on the outskirts of town. The left turn signal on the Mustang flashed as my husband approached a red stoplight at the intersection at the bottom of the hill. I braked to slow down to make the turn behind him when suddenly he picked up speed and charged through the intersection running the red light. Two oncoming vehicles crossed the intersection from either direction seconds after my husband lost hydraulic power. I was already in the turn lane with traffic bearing down on me. A police cruiser sat on the corner.

I passed the cruiser and saw the office working on his computer. I slowed to make a U-turn at the first turnout in the road while my daughter used her cellphone to call my husband. “Daddy said they just lost the brakes!” my daughter said. I headed back toward the intersection and pulled up behind the police cruiser.

“New Mustang, first car, no brakes,” I conveyed the gist of our plight to the officer.

My husband and son coasted to a stop in front of the only building on that road for miles; a newly built church. The parking lot was paved but the rest of the grounds did not have a blade of grass or a leaf of landscaping. They pushed the Mustang off the road and up the driveway to the empty parking lot. The church was dark except for the motion lights on the building and the illumination of the electronic marquee which cast heavenly glow over the Mustang.

The police officer pulled up in front of the Mustang which shimmered yellow and angelic in the neon and moonlight. “Now that’s a beauty,” he said. He waved his flashlight around the interior of the car.

“I ran the intersection…,” my husband began.

The officer nodded and motioned in my direction. “Your wife told me what happened. So you just bought this baby tonight, huh?” He smiled broadly at the Mustang. My husband beamed and popped the hood. Three men of various ages moved around the viper yellow body in candid admiration.

The tow truck arrived twenty minutes later. The driver stepped out of the cab and grinned at the Mustang. We later found out that he had three such vehicles of his own to show and to race. He lowered the ramp of the tow truck and hitched a large cable on either side of the axle under the car. He secured a winch to the cable and pulled the Mustang up the ramp. The driver raised the ramp to a horizontal position and the Mustang rose to an elevated position above our heads. The strobe lights on the tow truck bounced off the glossy paint of the Mustang in golden bursts of light against the dark sky. My husband rode in the tow truck. We followed at a reverent distance behind like Israelites trailing the Ark of the Covenant.

When we turned onto our street my son sighed. “It’s kind of like the triumphal entry.” I slid my eyes sideways to look at him. “Well, except that it’s dark and instead of a donkey it’s a tow truck,” he said.

“Isn’t it cool that Dad offered the seller exactly what he needed for his house?” my daughter said.

“How cool is it that the brakes didn’t go out on the highway?” I said.

“And no one got hurt when they ran a red light,” my daughter added. “And that policeman was sitting at the corner.”

“It’s kind of weird that we ran out of momentum in front of that church driveway,” my son said.

“I guess you could call it weird,” I said. “Or a God moment.”