Saviour

I gained a new understanding of thin times one snowy Advent afternoon in Calgary, the day my car died. Struggling on foot to a nearby Tim Horton's, I filled the air with curses: curses on the sky for sending so much wet snow in one night, curses on the traffic that forced me to walk in the ditch to avoid getting mowed down, curses on the makers of my hiking boots whom, I discovered, had not made a water-proof boot, curses on the makers of my car, the Plymouth Volare and the ancient year of its make- 1978. The air was blue with my curses and if looks
could kill I'm sure that all the people in that Tim Horton's donut shop would have died instantly upon looking at my face.

Sitting in Tim's waiting for the tow truck to come, I decided to put the time to good use and work on my sermon for the following Sunday. It was the Advent season and as usual, I was struggling to make sense of the story.

According to scripture the promise of the Christmas story is that somehow in Jesus, God's presence became real in a new way, and that in those times when chaos descends on us like the darkness of night, in those times God through Christ is present like a light illuminating our
way. Jesus saves us from the darkness giving us the light of hope when we feel nothing but hopelessness, helping us feel loved when we feel unloved, giving us courage when we are afraid.

Being in a particularly bad mood, I responded to the message cynically in my head, "Yeah, great, great. But what difference is the coming of Jesus supposed to mean to me?"

My answer came forty-five minutes later when the tow truck arrived. The driver got out of the truck and walked into Tim's looking for the desperate person who had called for help. Expecting to see a big, burly male, I was taken aback to discover that the driver was a woman. God's got a wicked sense of humour, I thought to myself.....

After getting the car loaded, we drove to the Plymouth dealership and I went inside the service department to talk to someone about what had happened to me that morning. A few minutes later, the tow truck driver joined me.

I'll be with you in a moment, the man behind the service counter said to her.

"It's alright. This is the person who rescued me," I explained to him.

Amazingly, without knowing a thing about me or what I did for a living, the woman responded, "Yeah, I'm her saviour."

And then I understood...

- Rev. Sandra M. Severs