It was a busy road and it was the busiest time of the day; morning rush hour. But it was my regular route to work and, despite cars being parked on both sides of the road, I was used to it, and vehicles of all shapes and sizes travelling in both directions were just about able to pass each other safely.
Occasionally however, a big bus came along.
Even though I was safely tucked in between two parked cars, the impatient idiot inside me stupidly asked: ‘Do I sit here and wait for the X-62 to pass or do I take my chances and go for it?’ After deciding on the latter, and quickly realising it was the wrong choice and that I’d horribly misjudged the size of the gap, there was really only one thing left to do: to get out of the way of the bus, even if it meant smashing the wing mirror off an inconveniently parked Vauxhall Vectra.
And that’s exactly what happened.
The noise was worse than if a fridge had been pushed off a cliff and landed on concrete – but with added pop – and the mirror, or bits of mirror, landed a long way from the car it was no longer attached to. It flew through the ice cold Northumberland air – in truth, I was fortunate it hadn’t flown into a sleepy school-goer or crazy masochistic morning jogger.
Of course, I pulled over and left a note for the owner of the Vectra, dusted myself off, felt incredibly angry with myself for making such an awful decision, kept telling myself ‘if only I’d waited six more seconds …’ and carried on to work feeling incredibly grumpy.
More than a few teachers that I work with noticed that I wasn’t my ‘chirpy self’ and when I told them why, I was astounded as to how shocked they were that I didn’t simply drive on, inviting the opportunity to ask them ‘well, what would Jesus do, eh?’ and opening up a few interesting conversations leaving more than a few work colleagues with little doubt as to what I believed in and how I try to live by it day in, day out.
I received a call from the Vectra-minus-a-mirror man later that day, and the damage was far worse than I had anticipated money wise.
It made me think though – well, if it cost over £200 to fix some bloke’s car, who cares? I got to name check Jesus to a bunch of work colleagues today. Although that had been a huge positive to coincide with a most unfortunate and pricey incident, I had to quickly remind myself – no, wait a minute here – this didn’t need to happen in order for me to open up about my faith – we can share the gospel for free.
‘…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere – in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ Acts 1:8
As it doesn’t cost a penny, and it’s the best news you could ever give to anybody, I should really start sharing it more often.
