I am a poor steward of my body at times, probably most of the time. One of the ways in which this is true, is that I tend to avoid sleep. It is not something that I plan to do, I just often have too many things that I want to do. I usually plan to go to bed a little past midnight, especially on Saturday night, since I have church in the morning.

Last night (Saturday – well early Sunday really) was no exception. However, I have done this several days in a row, and the lack of sleep is catching up with me. My alarm was set to go off at 7:20 A.M. with my intention of getting the things I need to get done, so that I may leave the house by 8:20 at the latest.

I do not drive, so I walk about 8 tenths of a mile to catch a bus which takes me to my church. My alarm went off, and I could really feel how tired I was, so I hit the snooze button in order to grab a few more minutes sleep. That part went as planned. When the alarm went off the second time, I was tempted to hit the snooze again, but knowing that I had things to get done, I heroically decided it was time to just get up, so I turned the alarm off.

The next thing I remember, after closing my eyes for a minute, was waking up on my own (or maybe God woke me up, lol), and I looked to discover, that it was now 8:4o. 8:40 Is the time my bus leaves the bus stop. There was no way I could catch the bus now, and the next one would not be for another hour, oh well!

As I said, I do not drive, my next best course of action  (at least to my mind) was to walk. Now, I was not going to walk all the way to church, but I figured that I could walk to the street where the bus runs, and hitchhike there, since it is a pretty busy street.

That (the busy street) is part of the reason I would go there,  for there are other equally short ways to walk to church, but I was going to hitchhike. I am 67 years old, have congestive heart failure, and have just recently shaken off my pneumonia, which I had for almost 2 years. Needless to say that although I am breathing better, I am not really in good enough shape, that I should walk 3.5 miles to church, not to mention how long that would take. The other part of the reason to walk that particular, might have been a plan not of my making, that will unfold in this post.

Okay, so that is the basic background to this story. Now, I think perhaps I should mention, that seeing hitchhikers here, is not common, in fact I do not think I have ever seen a hitchhiker here in the almost 10 years I have lived here.  However, I am going to point out that during that time, I think that I have hitchhiked myself, perhaps 10 or a dozen times. When I do, I always ask God to provide a lift, after all, I am not an idiot, what could it hurt?

In those times, I have always (and I mean no exceptions) gotten a ride. One time in particular, a couple had passed me and went about half a mile before (as they said) they felt moved to turn back and pick me up.  As that one turned out, they were going to the very intersection that I was heading to.

I do not want to judge anyone, but on two occasions, when I had to hitchhike to church, I was picked up by a Buddhist. I could not help but wonder, how many Christians had driven right past me. It was Sunday after all! Now I understand that people have fears, some rational some less so, so they can be excused, I totally get it! Still the Bible says “do not fear” of “fear not”, 365 times as I recall.  Therefore it is difficult for me to not wonder how many of us either do not read the Bible, or do not take it seriously. Well, I have decided, that when I am driving again, I plan not to bypass hitchhikers, but that is easy, since I said I do not see them here anyway.

So, going beyond that then, I ask God: “Bring me people, make me aware of people whom I may help, in all sorts of other ways. Let me be the kind of person who when a person asks of me, I will do even more than they ask.

"Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two." and  "Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you"  Matt 5

Well,  I did not come here to write a sermon, but it never hurts to remind people of things in the Bible, so back to my story:

I could list the other times where people picked me up hitchhiking, but I would like to instead mention, that I live in the Mojave Desert of California.  It easily exceeds 100 degrees here in the summer.  Two times I have been walking in the desert heat under those conditions (some have accused me for being wise, but they do not know of these events).  One these occasions, and this has only happened under these conditions,  I have had people come and offer me a ride. I was not asking, not hitchhiking, I do not think I was even looking forlorn! One of these times,  a person went past me about a block, and turned back and asked if I needed a ride. I thought that was fairly remarkable, he drove me right to my house.   The other time, I had an almost identical thing happen, except this guy only turned around about a few hundred feet, to come and ask me that. This one was extraordinary, in that it was in a residential neighborhood. Who offers rides to stingers who are not asking for one, in a residential zone, why would one thing a person had far to go anyway? Truthfully, I was a little bit lost. I would have found my way, but I was not quite sure of where I was relative to my destination. I think that day, I might have been close to a sun stroke.

So back to the story, the one where I was hitchhiking, or planning to hitchhike, the 3.5 miles to church. Remember that story? I walked to that busy road, and stuck my thumb out. One time in the past, I had thought that of all these people driving past, a certain number of the must be Christians, and that not helping me was similar to the story where some did not help Jesus (Matt 25:45 "Then He will answer them, 'Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.') So, with that thought in my mind, I decided that I would pray for those who passed me by, for their forgiveness).

As I did that, I had just done something that I had never done previously. Today, I decided also to do something that I had not done previously while hitchhiking. I elected to pray for the person, who was going to pick me up this morning.  This will mean something (perhaps) in a later part of the story. I had not gone too far when a 4 door pickup truck pulled over and stopped past me, perhaps 200 feet away. I ran as fast as I could to get to it, but at my age and in my shape, that is not very fast. The driver was a woman, and she told me to get in and motioned toward the back seat, so that is what I did. Once inside and on our way, she said: “I am a Lyft driver, but I am giving you this ride on the house. The "on the house" thing was good, since she would have been disappointed to know that I only had 75 cents on my person (one way bus fare for seniors).

She asked me where I was going, and I told her the names of the streets - the specific intersection. She was not familiar with where those were,  but I could guide her. I told her that the first street was the second signal ahead.  That may sound close to some of you, but FYI, it is a mile between signals here. I thought I was pretty clear, but as we approached the first street of the two I mentions, where the turn would be to the second street, she was not moving over to get into the turn lane. I tried to communicate with here about that, but she was not understanding!

I do not know why, but it took another mile and a quarter to get her to understand. Then she wanted to go to the next major intersection,  which was about another mile to a particular highway which heads back (more or less in the same direction), because these two streets meet at an angle. Now we were heading back west again, to the first street that I had wanted to turn on. This time we would be turning south, instead of north to get to that second street, the intersection closest to my church.

So then finally headed in the correct direction she gets a message on her Lyft app on her cell phone. Someone needed a ride, and needs to be picked up on the block where my church is, only about 300 feet from church as it turned out. Gee, isn't that a coincidence, how ‘lucky’ for me that someone  needed to be picked up, by a Lyft driver, 300 feet from the church that I was trying to get to, riding with a lift driver that I did not arrange for. Anyway,  feeling like I might even get to church now, she asked me: “Where are you going, anyway?” I told her that I was going to church. “She said, ah, that is nice, will you pray for me?” I said, sure, I could do that, but I already have, before I even saw you, I was praying for the one, who would pick me up!

She dropped me off, right at the door, and we said our goodbyes.  That is where this story ends, or at least this chapter, I may never know if there are other chapters.

Now, I am not going to tell you that God arranged all of this, and I am not going to say that He did not. I certainly do not know. The skeptics, will see a set of coincidences, others might  see orchestration.  You can be persuaded in your own mind, all I know is that it worked out well for me, and I am thankful. Feel free to offer a prayer for Elisabeth, the kind woman who gave me the ride to church. Oh, by the way, she told me that she never picks up hitchhikers, and she really REALLY would not consider giving a ride to a strange man under such conditions. I told her, I was not really surprised that she did.