24:15 How Do I Know?

May 26th, 2011

“Jesus loves me, how do I know? Because my oil cap tells me so.”

Well, those might not be the exact lyrics of the Sunday school song, but that’s how I’m singing it this week. The difference between a grade-school ditty and a man’s life comes down to experience.  When we are small our parents and teachers tell us how the world works, what God is like, and what to believe. As we grow older those lessons grow roots of their own, fixed in the soil of our experience and anchored by the assent of our minds and hearts.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. 12 We see now through a glass in a dark manner: but then face to face. Now I know in part: but then I shall know even as I am known.” (1 Cor 13:11)

One of the characteristics that Catholicism shares with our progenitor in Judaism is a practical earthiness, a visceral experience, a faith rooted in the created yet elevated all the way to the foot of the Throne of Heaven. Grace builds on nature, it does not pass it by. By the same token, we apprehend the realities of our soul through the window of our bodily senses.

In short, life happens; God is near.

Jesus loves me, how do I know? Because when my engine light came on, I stopped at the gas station to check the oil instead of driving all the way downtown.  Imagine my surprise when I popped the hood of my car and discovered my oil cap missing. The underside of the hood was covered with a black, tarry goo and the engine was steaming with heat.

Apparently the last time I added oil to my older model car, I drove away sans cap. How long does it take to spit up all your oil all over the your engine block? My guess is a week or two. Any longer and I risked seizing the engine into a solid block of useless metal. Since I can’t afford a new car, I count this discovery as a great blessing.

I added my spare quart of oil and drove slowly to the dealership to get a new oil cap. Strangely, they didn’t have one in stock, so they sent me 7 miles to the next dealership. Somehow, I went to the body shop instead. From there another several miles, wrong turns, and slow traffic. I got hot and frustrated; I got my new oil cap, 4 quarts of new oil, and got oil on my dress pants to boot. No one I encountered seemed to be in a particularly sympathetic mood, so I just had to lump it.

It was noon before I got everything squared away and was able to head into work. I was feeling like this was going to be a pretty bad day, and was preparing to feel sorry for myself when I saw it:  an 18-wheeler truck had jackknifed on the narrow ramp to the highway that I take every day and rolled over. Listening to the radio report and doing some quick calculation, I realized that the accident happened just about the time that I would have been on that ramp.

Here’s the photo:

I wasn’t there to get crushed by that truck because I was chasing down a new oil cap.  So yeah, I had problems, but God spared me and my family from greater ones. How often does that happen? Only God knows for sure.

So do I have experience that Jesus loves me? Yes, because the troubles he allows me are mercifully less than I deserve. Crazy as it sounds, a lost oil cap was a sure sign of his Providence.  My alternative was pretty bleak.

Have you ever had a disaster that was a blessing in disguise?

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4 Responses to 24:15 How Do I Know?

  1. Pingback: 24:15 How Do I Know? « Press Release « catholic-press-releases.info

  2. @Aluwir says:
    May 27, 2011 at 7:54 am

    Thanks for a first-hand look at divine providence. As a convert, I had to sort out Catechism 302 and following ( http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt1sect2chpt1… ) – and abandon one of my more-cherished ideas.

    I think it's easier to see the hand of God working when something obviously beneficial happens to us. The trick, perhaps, is to praise God when 'bad things happen to good people.'

    Again, thanks for sharing.

  3. Lindsay says:
    May 27, 2011 at 10:59 pm

    I don't think I've ever actually *avoided* a major accident so much as had one, but I think about your conclusion every time I pass by a major accident that's holding up traffic. At least I wasn't *in* the accident…this time.

  4. Barb Schoeneberger says:
    June 12, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    Great post. Until the next world we'll not realize, most of us, how we have been protected by God. All I can say is, "Holy Smoke!".

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