Broken window, stronger faith You know that old c…
admin August 29th, 2006
Broken window, stronger faith
You know that old cliché about the Lord working in mysterious ways? Sometimes things are cliché because they’re true. I think that’s one of them.
So I stayed quite late at work today, trying to get a mailing printed. (Our color printer/copy machine is ridiculously slow.) I left at about 10 minutes to 10, and started walking for my car, which was uncharacteristically parked on a street just a little north of campus. As I got close, I saw something glittering in the street next to the car. “Please, Lord, let it be a puddle,” thought I. As I’m sure you guessed by the title of the post, it wasn’t. Someone threw a chunk of concrete through my front driver’s window.
Fortunately (I might have thought Providentially), a campus police officer was just driving by and saw the glass. He took down my information for the police report while I, grumbling about people not having anything better to do, started checking for missing articles (nothing’s missing) and trying to clean up the glass. Incidentally, the perpetrator also appears to have whacked my driver’s door with the same chunk of concrete, which appears to have affected the exterior locking mechanism. I hope that’s not permanent, ’cause it’s expensive to repair. However, mercifully, the door still locks and unlocks from the inside, so there’s hope.
So the good and kind officer makes sure I start up and we both start heading out. However, my car is acting funny. It’s rumbling and grumbling and generally not sounding good. Then the “check engine” light starts flashing. It’s never flashed before – it’s come on, but not flashed.
I pull over. The cop, who I am starting to think is my guardian angel in disguise, is still behind me and pulls up next to me. I explain the situation (sliver of a silver lining: I didn’t have to roll down the window!), and he agrees that the car doesn’t sound good. I kill the engine and reach to pop the hood…which…oddly…yes, very curious…seems to ALREADY BE POPPED. So I get out, walk around to the front, the cop brings a flashlight, and we open the hood.
Our window-smashing chum took nothing. All s/he did was unplug one of my spark plugs. Which took me back to my original gripe about people not having anything better to do.
I don’t know why this person did that. I don’t know if it’s someone who doesn’t like me (possible, but I don’t know offhand of anyone who dislikes me personally enough to do that – well, at least not who knows what kind of car I drive), some random hoodlum with nothing better to do (seems the most probable), or someone who works for a towing or auto glass company (that’s just a shameless nod to the conspiracy nuts).
But I can tell you what I do know. I know that the Lord was with me, and that He was protecting me. As I was grumbling and brushing glass around, the cop observed that it could have been a lot worse, and I immediately acknowledged that he was right. It could’ve been. Think about it:
– the car was still there;
– nothing appears to have been taken;
– most importantly, the crime was against my property, not my person;
– the cop was on the scene at the same time I was, so I wasn’t standing in the dark in midtown
Detroit at 10 p.m. waiting for the cops to come;
– and the cop was there and able to identify and correct the spark plug issue before the car
conked out (and possibly was damaged; I don’t know if that would damage the engine).
Thank the Lord! That’s all I can say: thanks be to God!
I really feel sorry for the poor soul who did this. I can’t help thinking that s/he must have a really crummy life if this kind of pointless vandalism is appealing.
