Doug Van Pelt

A Social Experiment

I'm going to do a little experiment. Here in liberal Austin, it is probably dangerous to your car (or your emotional psyche) if you put a pro-life sticker on your bumper. I have a Stand True Ministries sticker with an illustration of a little girl, which says "She's a Child; Not a Choice." Stay tuned to this blog to see if I incur any vandalism or get flipped off while driving (cutting people off or driving stupid doesn't count, of course). It's funny to see how open-minded (or not) people can be when it comes to dissension. As much as I like the University of Texas, I'm glad I only grabbed a minor in Journalism and didn't get an entire degree in that field, because I would've had to have gone against the grain of the open-minded club that exists there, which is open-minded as long as you are not pro-life or a Christian that believes the Bible is accurate. Then it can be quite an intolerable experience for the person that breaks ranks and actually thinks for themself.

Okay, enough about politics. Let's talk about death and automobiles! On the way home from church yesterday, my wife gasped as we approached the site of an accident, where two lanes of Southbound traffic were diverted into one of our Northbound lanes. "Oh my gosh, honey!" The way she said that made me fearful that she recognized the overturned vehicle (and knew one of the victims). But the reason she was shocked was the horrific accident that had occured. A telephone pole had impaled a large pickup truck. I'm a critic of "rubbernecking," so I didn't slow down any more than the traffic in front of me, but when I glanced at the scene, I couldn't believe what I saw. A telephone pole was snapped in two, and angling from the ground at about 40 degrees. The jagged edges of the pole showed a violent snapping. And the pole went down and through the floorboard of this large overturned pickup truck. We imagined that it was an instant death or that any survivors were life-flighted out of there. As morbid as it sounds, I thought that, if I were a police officer on the scene, I would have ordered a photographer to the scene after all the emergency vehicle calls. It was that mysterious and large-scale shocking.

This morning as we roused ourselves from sleep at 6:30am, the news reported a fatal accident in Pflugerville, Texas; and that the police were looking for witnesses. The male driver was dead on the scene, but a female passenger was star-flighted to a local hospital and was in stable condition. They were looking for witnesses, who may have seen another pickup carrying motorcycles that this truck unsuccessfully tried to pass, and lost control. It seems the police are trying to make sense of the wreck. I have no idea how what I saw could have occured. The telephone pole was sticking out of the metal floorboard, and it was snapped in half 15 to 20 feet past where it was sticking out of the vehicle. That's weird.

Psalm 27 talks a lot about security, and the Lord being the stronghold of our life. While I do not know the plans the Lord has for me, He tells me that they are good. I trust in Him for protection and try to remain ever vigilant to pray and ask for protection for myself, my family, and those I know and love. While we cannot guarentee that we will live long lives free of accident or disaster, we can overcome fear from calamity and hardship by putting our trust in God. The Amplified Bible has deeply enriched my life, if even for one verse along -- in John 3:16, where it "amplifies" the word for "believe" by inserting the words "cling to, trust in, rely on," which makes that simple word "believe" more active. I'm also drawn to the verse in Psalm 27 (8) that declares:

"My heart says of You, 'Seek His face!' Your face, Lord, I will seek."

That resonates within me, because I truly believe that our spirit has been regenerated by God through salvation and that now part of me lives and breathes to know God. My heart will tell me, 'Seek His face!' There are times when I'm drawn to my knees, and part of that is like an anchor to my soul, which pulls me into wanting to seek His face. There is great comfort there, but it's not my comfort that I seek -- it's His face, His presence, His Words. Talk about a longing fulfilled! Knowing God begins to give a taste of satisfaction to my soul. That God-shaped hole in my heart gets a sense of being filled. A tiny little sense, but it is way good.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at April 25, 2005 08:54 AM