Recall the former days

My middle-age friend Kay told me about the time when, at age 18, she used her mother’s car to visit a friend, though the vehicle was not insured. She had an accident at the friend’s house, backing into a neighbor’s car and putting a dent in it. It was late at night. Nobody saw it happen.

Kay could have gotten away with it. But that didn’t even occur to her back then. What did occur to her was that God was all-powerful and loved her. The next day she went to the door of the person whose car she had rammed and told him she was the one who hit it—though the admission of fault seemed disadvantageous not only to her but to her mother. The man who answered the door told Kay he would be contacting her. Then Kay took off to college.

Kay didn’t hear from the owner of the vehicle for quite a while. Finally he called and said his car was a company car and that the insurance would take care of it. That was the end of the matter. When I expressed total admiration for Kay’s handling of the incident, she replied, half jokingly and half self-effacingly, that she had been a new Christian at the time of the incident and didn’t know if she would act so laudably today. It made me think of the biblical warning not to slip away from early faith and childlike trust in God:

“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. … Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. … For, Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10:32–38, ESV).

We believed God like a child once. We did the right thing because we knew He could do anything, and that He loved us, and that it would turn out OK in the end no matter how messy it was in the middle, if we only did what’s right. Just think of the deliverance Kay would have missed out on if she had “gotten away with” her crime. God wants to be marvelous in our lives. When we trust Him against all fleshly understanding, we give Him space for marvels.