by Nik Nilsson
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As my Toyota bounced off the guardrail I felt a certain amount of peace. Peace in the knowledge that God was with me, sitting beside me, comforting me through the good and the bad in my life. I had gotten up that morning a little under the weather and shot a quick but heartfelt prayer in the hopes that the Almighty would help me to simply get through the day. And he did just that, I could feel it; when you know God, when you know his presence and what that presence feels like, there isn’t much that life can do to hurt you.
Realizing that I’d jammed the brake pedal to the floor in a fit of reflexive self-preservation, I relaxed and instead played with the steering, as if it could maneuver a car over whose hood I could see only sky. I smiled a little at my predicament and thanked God for what he’d given me, a day that, though rife with distraction and temptation, had turned out okay after all. Stronger for having spent that day with him, I exhaled in a sigh of happiness.
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As the nose of the car came back down, I noticed that I was still over tarmac. The left front wheel hit first; or rather, the left front bumper hit very briefly but the wheel was what survived. I bounced a couple of times, fishtailed, and began climbing the embankment opposite the guardrail. I figured I might as well keep steering just to see what happened. As it turns out, not much. I plowed through some bushes and hit a very solid-looking tree head on. My windshield popped out, throwing the wipers into the bushes, and the hood curled up like a sheet of clear-coated black tinfoil.
Then, silence as the Xbox placed my car back on the pavement.
Wait, you didn’t think I really piled my car into a tree today, did you?
No, no, no! I’m a huge fan of driving games, and I’ve been working hard at mastering one of the latest, a little number called DiRT. Actually, I thought I had it mastered, but then I went out and bought myself a racing wheel and some pedals. I just couldn’t reconcile the fact that I was driving 800 horsepower worth of automotive genius with a mere controller.
Now I’m working through a learning curve that’s more difficult than any hairpin.
I didn’t sit down here to write about all that, though; well, not directly, anyway. I sat down to write about my day with God. It didn’t start as well as I’d have hoped; this morning I was working on some podcast scripts, praying and writing and writing and praying, and though things were coming to me they weren’t the right things. Right for later, maybe, but not right for now. I did get a nice piece started on camels, but it needs work. Lots of work.
Thing is, I’ve been under the weather all day, and even if the written text was near perfect, speaking it into the microphone wasn’t going to happen. My speech centers were shot, and completely disengaged from my brain.
More than usual, I mean.
And that’s where the Xbox comes in. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t work, but there was a brand new racing wheel upstairs, and it really needed my attention. I kinda looked up apologetically as I abandoned God’s work, and I asked for his patience.
That’s when the greatest thing happened. Not only did he give me the patience (I could tell, because the pressure completely left my shoulders), but he decided to stay with me. God decided that day that he’d be my co-pilot; not my pilot, of course, or we wouldn’t have flipped the Toyota. As I negotiated the bends, some of them successfully, I just talked to God, kind of like open-mike night at a very strange prayer meeting. I didn’t speak of anything deep or philosophical, just life. Every time I made a successful turn, I thanked God; each time I missed one, he patted me on my spiritual back and told me to ease off the accelerator already.
What a fantastic day it’s been! Intellectually I know God is always there, but those days when he is there, those days when you ask him in and he just sort of hangs out with you, those days are special. When I was just starting to explore everything that is Creation, I couldn’t fathom God’s having any sort of interest in the mundane. He’s got more important things to do than come play Xbox with me, right? I mean, there’s girls trapped in wells and real Toyotas flipping over real guard rails and Jesus really needing to take the wheel. What’s one guy with a new racing controller and a complete lack of the skill to use it?
God’s beloved, that’s what he is. God’s quirky, funny, bad-tempered, sometimes sinful, often inappropriate, always distracted creation, and in those moments, on those virtual race tracks in that virtual Toyota, he’s the most loved person on the face of the earth.
For more information visit Nik Nilsson’s website at www.smallisthegate.com
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