"The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground." Genesis 18:1-2
The older I get and the more experiences that occur in my life, the more I am convinced that often the Lord sends people into our lives at specific times for very specific reasons. Sometimes the people He sends only appear for a moment or two and then leave - never to return. But while they were there, they did something wonderful and possibly even "saved the day" - to use the cliche.
It was in the fall of my junior year of college. I woke up late that morning and so I was in a hurry. I stopped to pick up my friend, Denise, and we headed out to South Austin to the elementary school where we were working at our first field experience in education. But we were very late!
The roads were wet that morning due to a light rain overnight, and I didn't slow down like I should have. As we neared the highway, I looked in the rear view mirror to see how awful I looked (remember I woke up late!). For that instant, I really should have been looking in front of me...because I didn't see the big shuttle bus that had stopped abruptly just a few yards away. Too late! Denise yelled at me to look out, I hit the brakes, but we skidded into the back of the shuttle bus. The seat belts worked by keeping us both from going into the dashboard or the windshield, but they didn't prevent me from going vertical about six inches in my seat and hitting my head hard on the roof.
Denise and I staggered from the heavily damaged car, but I suddenly felt something running down my head. I didn't know it at the time, but I had a huge gash on the top of my head and was bleeding profusely. Denise ran around the car and helped me to the sidewalk. I could barely talk as she asked me if I was okay and told me to give her my grandparents' phone number. I don't remember much after that...
Except for one very big detail: a stranger picked me up, put me in his truck, and drove me a few blocks to the UT Student Health Center. This man - whoever he was - helped me into the emergency room, made sure I was in good hands, and then he left. I never saw him again.
My head was sewn up, my grandparents arrived, Denise made her way to the Health Center too, and I was taken home. I spent the weekend in bed at my grandparents' home recovering from the concussion that I also received in the wreck.
By Monday morning, I was back at class, albeit feeling a little shaky. I ran into Denise on the way to class, and I almost started crying when I saw her limping badly. Denise had sprained both of her ankles in the wreck, and she didn't even know it until her roommate came to get her from the Health Center. It took us both several days before we felt normal again, and my headaches finally faded away.
As life returned to normal, I realized that I never knew who that man was who took me to the emergency room in his very nice truck. No one knew his name, no one spoke to him. He just saved the day and then disappeared.
With no social media in 1978, I did the only thing I could do: I put an ad in the student newspaper asking for information about that man and thanking him for his help. No response was ever heard.
He was one of the Lord's people or one of the Lord's messengers or one of the Lord's angels.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. I am still grateful to this day.
But I wonder who he was...
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