If you are drowning in the ocean, and someone jumps in and risks his life to save you, you want to say “Thank you!” don’t you? And if that person later needs some help, you want to give it, don’t you? You will do anything to show your being thankful for his saving your life.
That’s how I feel to the Lord for saving me from a terrible death on that October afternoon in 1989 in Oakland, California. And my wife, Grace, too.
We had just flown in to San Francisco airport that afternoon and had driven our car over the great Bay Bridge on our way to Alameda to visit our son Bob (that’s the bridge where part of it collapsed just a half hour later in the earthquake, sending some cars and people down into the Bay). Usually when we left Alameda to drive home to where we live, we would take the Nimitz Freeway north until it joins on to Interstate 80. Part of it in Oakland was then stacked on top of each other like a sandwich—the cars and trucks going north were on the freeway just underneath the freeway going south—like peanut butter in a sandwich.
But just as we were leaving, my Bob suggested that we go by the Food Mill Bakery and get some of their delicious whole wheat bread. Good idea! So that took us off the Nimitz Freeway, and we drove an aroundabout way until we got on to Interstate 80 just above where the Nimitz Freeway joined it. So we had missed the Nimitz sandwich completely.
Just as we drove on to 1-80 in our Honda, it got so I couldn’t steer it. It was weaving all over the road. The steering wheel felt like all four of my tires had suddenly gone flat. So I stopped at the side of the road and got out to look at them. But they were all just like they ought to be. I was perplexed, but I got back in the car and we started off again, not knowing that there had been a terrible earthquake. A mere half a mile behind us there were cars and trucks caught in the big sandwich, the collapse of the south-bound freeway on top of the north-bound freeway. We didn’t know it at that moment, but our going out of the way to buy some whole-wheat bread had saved us from being crushed in that terrible “sandwich.”
When a few minutes later we learned on the radio the truth of what had happened, we both prayed and thanked the Lord for saving us. Our lives could have come to an end right then.
As I think about it, I begin to understand: our lives don’t belong to us. When someone saves us from drowning, we want to say “Thank you!” as though we owe that person our lives. And just saying so to God sounds empty, unless we give Him our lives.
There was a man who understood this and he told the whole world about it: “The love of Christ constraineth us [that means, His love moves us, almost forces us!], because we thus judge, that if One died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live [that’s you and I] should henceforth live not unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15, KJV). It’s the same “Thank You, thank You, thank You,” idea! How can I hold anything back from Him—my next breath even is my debt to Him.
And that’s what we do—we have given Him our lives and all we have. Won’t you do the same?