REASONABLE REACTION

This is from a memory from 1980, as my Dad might speak of it:

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It was nighttime, but we had on our headlights, so could see clearly. I was sure it looked like there was a car several hundred yards in front of us that turned left off the road where there was no intersection. But…how is that possible? In the few seconds’ silence in the car, I could tell my wife sitting next to me as well as my daughter in the passenger seat behind me had seen it too. So I made a U-turn to go check it out.

It hadn’t been a hallucination. There was a small car, all right, with its nose stuck in the tall—what locals call “habu grass” at the side of the road. But there didn’t seem to be anyone inside. Every once in a while I heard a clang, grunt, shuffle.

I didn’t want to be mugged, and tried shining my flashlight towards the sound. “Douka shimashitaka?” (Anything wrong?) I ventured.

More clanging. “Get the car off me!” was the muffled reply. WHAT?!

“GET THE CAR OFF ME!” Someone was stuck down there!

We had to flag cars down; one old couple and their daughter were not strong enough to back a car up an incline so had to get people to help. But cars were unwilling to stop in the middle of the night; they could be mugged too! It took my daughter’s actually stepping out in the middle of the road and hoping the car would not run her over before we could beg its occupants for help—which they were willing, of course, to do.

Three cars were stopped, and total strangers worked together to back the car up onto the shoulder of the road. A missionary would take responsibility for the rest, they must have figured and left. My wife, who probably could’ve been a nurse had she not become a missionary, hurried down to the bottom.

“Are you all right?” She could see his arm was bleeding.

He stood up, towering over her. To summarize, what had happened was: the man had had too much to drink. He had been driving home and needed to relieve himself. He stopped the car by the side of the road, not realizing he’d put the car, not in park, but in neutral, and since the road is at an incline, the car actually followed him, and when startled by the bump, he spun around and his arm, spread out to the side, had been pinned down on the grass cushioning by the car. The clanging noise had been caused by his kicking the underside of the car trying to get free. After all, if he had stayed pinned there ‘til morning, he knew he would be at the mercy of the habus who live in that grass—for which it is named.

Kimiko gave him a handkerchief for the bleeding, but it was apparent he didn’t seem to give it much thought. The car had been taken off him, and he was going to be okay! There was relief written all over his face.

“Thank you! YOU SAVED MY LIFE! What do you want? A Thousand Dollars? Anything! I want to do something for you!”

"No, no, no; we're just glad you’re all right", we kept saying; but he kept saying he had to do something. It just seemed the reasonable thing to do.

It made me think of how, if God has saved us, not from a nighttime of being pinned under steel and rubber with threat of being bitten by a venomous snake; but from the weight of hell's unending torment, it's ONLY REASONABLE to want to present our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice.