Ben Hur in Romania

Have you ever read the book or saw the movie, "Ben Hur"? One of the climax points of this story is where Ben Hur's enemy locks chariot wheels with his him and attempts to wreck his chariot.

This reminds me of the experience we had while driving back from our church service last night here in Romania. We had to speak at a church about three hours away and had gone about half way back on the highway when we met up with a modern Romanian kamikaze driver. Romania has more than their allotment of kamikaze drivers as they seem to almost be the majority here rather than the minority. Basically, they believe that if they can pass another vehicle with more than two seconds left to spare before hitting the oncoming traffic head on, then they are not good drivers.

Well, last night we were happily driving along when one of these kamikazis tried to pass us. Unfortunately, he had less than two seconds left to spare by the time he passed our back left wheel. Very unfortunately for him, an eighteen wheeler was coming the opposite way. Very, very rapidly he found himself with his driver's side mirror being whacked off by the semi truck and his passenger side wheel rubbing against our tire at about 60 miles an hour. Now this is not too comfortable a situation to be in so he rapidly slammed on his brakes and got his damaged car to the side of the road. The semi truck never even stopped and several hours later we got on our way again with just our hubcab polished up to the color of his wheel. The police chewed him out very well and he went shaking on his way with a tract in his hand in case he should think of his very impending death while he was falling asleep that night.

In my case, I thought of the song, "Holy Ground" that says, "and I believe that there are angels all around." The Bible indicates that children each have at least one angel apiece, so last night we kept at least ten angels busy. How many angels does it require to control these types of situations? Who knows? Maybe it took one hundred, or maybe it just took one very strong angel just stretching out his arm a little bit to keep our vehicles separated. What does it matter how many angels it took--God always watches over His children and He only allows the circumstances that fit in His perfect plan. The fact that we are in Romania makes no difference to God--He is not limited by borders of countries. This situation could have just as easily happened in the U.S. The only difference is that the kids had to go to the bathroom at the Romanian police station and they only had an outhouse. That just made it a little more interesting--especially when they never could find it in the dark. That's the fun part about being in another country--you just never know what might happen, but it doesn't matter because God is always there.