DRIVE THRU GRACE

Drive Thru, Greensboro, NC

We’ve all heard about “drive by shootings” on the news these troubling days, but this morning I experienced “drive thru grace”!  I’m certain that in this day and age, I have literally spent over a hundred hours in fast food drive thru automobile lines.  And the vast majority of those ill spent hours were boring and uneventful and quite probably had some influence on my heart attack years ago.  But there have been a few that stand out in my mind like today’s experience. 

Not long after Karen and I were married, we traded for a new Oldsmobile Cutlass.  I really liked that car and it was one of the best automobiles I had ever driven.  We pulled into a fast food drive thru line to order a quick meal during the crowded dinner hour one evening.  An elderly woman ahead of us was having trouble communicating with the squawk box, so she was maneuvering her big Buick back and forth in a fruitless effort to place her order.  As it seemed that she had finally established communication with the teenager inside, I noticed that her last move had been in reverse, since her backup lights were still switched on.  I quickly glanced in my rear view mirror to check out my options, but we were inescapably trapped in line!  Then as we gasped in horror, the woman hit the accelerator to advance backwards and demolished my front grill assembly.

 After a few seconds I gathered my wits and reconciled the situation as a simple matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time with no malice on the part of the emotional driver ahead of us.  We offered our assurances that accidents happen and exchanged pleasantries and insurance policy numbers.

This morning I was once again confronted with a young lady in a silver Dodge Charger ahead of me in line at Starbucks.  She had sort of cut me off to enter the drive thru line off the main street and I noticed that my car was now the last to clear the street in the full capacity line.  And it wasn’t helping that now the Charger was staying at least one half a car’s length behind the car in front of it.  I inched as close as possible to the Charger in order to provide room for the car behind me while grumbling all the while.  You know there are unwritten rules for operating in drive thru lines!    This actually continued all the way to the window.  As I watched the Charger finally moving away, the cashier informed me that the car ahead had paid my bill. 

There I sat after spending the past 5-10 minutes grumbling to myself at the stranger looking in her rear view mirror.  I was offering derision and she had offered grace.  I had no other response than to offer to pay for the car behind me.  The cashier let me know that this bill was half of mine.  When I arrived back home to finish the handout for a class I’ll be facilitating on the Gospel in Life, Grace Changes Everything, it occurred to me that somebody had just reminded me to stay graceful by personally delivering the same message to me.

Wouldn’t it be great is there was a drive thru dispensing grace?  Well actually, there is such a place with no lines even though many are served.  And the good news is that the price has been paid by One who has gone before us!