Ok, this is just plain kooky. A friend of mine purchased a used vehicle about six months ago. It's been working great until today...the day before his wife has a medical procedure early tomorrow morning. To top it off, their heater stopped working in their home within the hour of the car not starting...

They have a backup plan. A portable heater and electric blankets are getting them through tonight. And they have a second vehicle for two, but they have kids and no room for them in the backup vehicle.That is their backup plan. But backup plans are never as good as the real deal. (I know--our back-up plan for the malfunctioning dishwasher in our home has been Mr. Hansen. I like it much better when Mr. Kenmore does the dishes--which he will be back to doing in a couple of weeks.)

So when his wife called to ask about some unrelated thing a couple of hours ago, she told me about the day's issues. Having owned clunker cars in my day, I know some very basic mechanics of automobiles. I offered to take a look. We found out that it was an electrical issue.

That is as much as I can say about it though. My expertise ended after testing the battery. I don't know what the electical issue is or was exactly. All I know is that we put the battery back in, told Jesus we trusted him even if it didn't start, and then turned the key: The lights came on, but nothing else happened. We poked around a little more--nothing substantial and had pretty much written-off resolving it. Then he asked me: "Should we try starting it again?" To which I replied, "God's done weirder things before, why not?" He turned the key, and eight pistons started pounding...and we started laughing.

Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor.

They are still operating on Plan B for heating, but they have their wheels back. (And we were able to narrow down why it was doing what it was doing...so he can get it fixed when he has time and resources to deal with it.)

We may never know why God wanted an hour from us to figure that out, but He is trustworthy and so we trust him. Maybe it was enough that doing this left one less thing to worry about going into tomorrow for his family. Regardless, is was really a joy to see him answer our prayer in "real time" as we talked to Him and he talked to us.