Beseeching the mercy of God

If you're like me you don't think about God too often.

In fact, you can forget about (and far be it from me to wonder about God's chosen pronoun) Him/Her for years at a time.

Until you're in a jam. Like that time I was climbing the cliffs at the Elora Quarry and it was late autumn and the water was really cold and I was not even half-way to the top and I felt my strength ebbing away...

"Please God..."

At least that's when I remember God.

But I did make it to the top.

It was probably another twenty years or so before I called on God again.

I was driving up the Elora Road with my kids in the car, a Friday ritual we observed religiously every other weekend for years and years.

We're in my baffed out Subaru wagon, and we're driving into what looks like a nasty storm.

The farther we went the nastier the storm got.

It got so bad that just a couple miles south of Mildmay I couldn't in good conscience keep driving. The rain was coming not down, but completely sideways. You couldn't see two feet in front of you! I pulled over and parked by the side of the highway at the bottom of a hill.

I didn't pull the parking brake, and next thing I know, the same wind that's making the rain go horizontal is pushing my Subaru back up the hill.

That's around the time my son, the younger one, burst into tears.

My daughter wasn't long in following.

So what do you do in this situation? My gut instinct was to just join in the crying and hope for the best.

BUT!!... I'm the parent here!

It's up to me to show some leadership!

So we had an impromptu prayer meeting. We all joined hands and bowed our heads, and yours truly had his first chat with the Lord since that time he was stuck on the wall of the Elora Quarry.

Long story short, we made it safely home to my little shack in Mildmay, but that was the storm that poisoned the municipal water wells in Walkerton and put the Walkerton water crisis on the map.

People died because of that.


I've never actually asked God for anything since.

But I make a point of thanking God every day for the completely unwarranted good fortune that I continue to enjoy, and God willing, will enjoy for years to come.