There is a distinctly unique sound that is generated by an air cooled car engine. Once you have driven a Volkswagen Beetle or van from the sixties the sound is always with you. Indeed you may quietly wish that your much more luxurious and modern car had that very sound. It was a kind of a whine that became slightly more high pitched with the changing of each gear as you accelerated. It was a comforting and yet exciting sound at the same time. I recall that sound vividly when I remember a Sunday morning in the fall of 1968. I was on my way alone for a week of practice teaching. It was the first of the eight required weeks spent in real classrooms. I was nervous about the prospect of having to actually teach the class by myself later in the week. I was driving to a boarding house in
Our blue 1962 Volkswagen Beetle with its very modest 1200 cc engine was responding well to its young driver; the same foolish driver who decided that the car ahead on the two lane highway was moving just a bit too slowly. I saw nothing coming and pulled out to pass on what appeared to be a long straight stretch of road. I was about to learn a terrifying lesson in passing safety. To my horror, a car exiting a gas station ahead of me turned without looking to the right into my lane. There I was right beside the car I was passing about one hundred yards from a head on collision that in a small car with a rear engine would have most certainly been fatal. Speeding up quickly was not an option. Neither was slamming on the brakes. The driver beside me sized up the situation and attempted to slow down and pull over on the right to give me enough room to get by. I was positive, even as I pulled over at the last second, that I was about to hit the car with a terrified looking couple coming toward me. To this day, I am certain that I missed both cars by no more than one half of an inch. All three cars pulled off the road hundreds of yards apart and sat in stunned silence. No one got out. We just sat and contemplated what could have been for about fifteen minutes. Since that day, I do not pass a vehicle when there is an entrance to the road on the passing lane. All too often, drivers will look to their left, but quickly forget that someone could pull out to pass and neglect to look to the right. Indeed when I pull onto a highway, I look both ways each and every time.
As I sat in that idling car on that morning, I was sure that my escape was nothing short of a miracle. As I recall the vivid detail of that memory, even today, I still feel it was a miraculous escape. I also know that even then, twenty-eight years before I would come to know the Lord, His hand was upon Lozanne and me. His plan for us evidently would unfold later in life. The irony is that the miraculous escape from death or injury was nothing compared to what the Lord would do for me further down the road of life. He sought me out at just the right time and offered to me forgiveness and redemption through salvation. Who can even fathom His infinite mercies and His long suffering patience? Indeed his interventions and constant mercies are more than can be numbered!
5 Many, O LORD my God, are Your wonderful works Which You have done; And Your thoughts toward us Cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them, They are more than can be numbered. (Psalm 40:5)
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