When I was a junior in high school, a friend of mine, Dave Smith, had a 1958 Ford. It wasn’t very much to look at, but it was his and he was the only one in our youth group who owned a car. I got to drive my parent’s “grocery-getter” station wagon occasionally, but never to church or to school. One Saturday, Dave and his dad were working on the linkage of his car. Their hands were greasy, so Dave asked me to get behind the wheel and try out the car to see if they had fixed the problem. He told me to back the car to the end of their driveway and to gun the engine. The linkage from the accelerator pedal to the carburetor should be working fine now. But it didn’t. I backed down the driveway, put “the pedal to the metal,” and took off. But when I hit the brake, the car barely slowed. The linking rod from the accelerator pedal to the powerful V-eight engine was stuck wide open and the engine was too powerful for the brakes to stop the car. The car was accelerating and would hit the house in three seconds. At the same instant, I pulled the emergency brake, turned the engine off, and pumped the hydraulic brake as hard as I could. The car rolled to a stop, and Dave asked, “How did it go?” I was too frightened to answer. Hey, have you ever been in a situation when you had to act fast? It could have been a kitchen fire that had to be extinguished quickly. It might have been a choking baby gasping for air. It could have been a robbery, or it might have been a difficult personal situation that had to be defused quickly before it escalated into something worse. David said in Psalm 56:3, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.” A short but powerful verse. Hey, you may not have time to begin a long prayer to God. You may have time only to cry out, “Lord help me!” But be assured, the dear Lord above hears your prayer, and He will be there in your time of need. You can count on Him!
