BY SOFIA HUENERGARDT

Y HANDS GRIPPED THE STEERING wheel as I stared in utter bewilderment at the crumpled hood that loomed before me. As dazed as I was, a voice within my head could still scream, No! No! Can I please relive the past 30 seconds? This is not my car!

Moments before, life had been so carefree. Soothing music played inside the car; beautiful sunshine shone all around. I was headed into town for an appointment when a blur of color in my right peripheral vision indicated something terribly wrong. Someone had just bought a new pick-up truck and was driving it home to his wife. He plowed into me at more than 60 miles per hour as I blissfully pulled away from a stop sign into the intersection. When everything finally stopped spinning, I was sitting along an embankment in a borrowed car pointed in the wrong direction.

Unable to take the scene in, I let out all my breath and laid my head on the steering wheel. That's when I noticed there were no shoes on my feet. How could I have left the house without shoes? What kind of idiot goes to work with no shoes on? My eyes glanced at the passenger side of the car. There were my shoes. The force of the impact had pulled them off my feet.

I looked up and wondered what to do; I had never been in an accident before. It was 1989-before everybody had cell phones-and I was on a country highway in Alabama. Me, an angry truck driver, and a guy who had witnessed the crash.

By the Side of the Road
At the time I was working for a medical ministry. The cofounder of the ministry, Dr. Agatha Thrash, had generously offered me the use of her car while she was in Switzerland. As I sat in the wounded car by the side of the road good people from the ministry drove past twice. I know they recognized me, but no one stopped to help.

One person waved. Another called out to see whether I was OK. Maybe they were too busy. Maybe they had important things on their minds. No matter. God had a different plan to bring good out of this miserable situation.

My good Samaritan arrived in an old beat-up Ford Escort, bumper stickers plastered over the back end, including the rear window. She had come to visit a friend at the ministry in a last-ditch attempt to get off drugs, but had awakened that morning wondering what she was doing in the sticks. She was aimlessly driving around hoping for some action. My accident was the best she could find.

I recognized Wendie as she pulled up next to me. Her drug-parched brain didn't remember meeting me the day before, but I could never forget her. Usually dressed in black, sometimes accessorized with a studded leather dog collar or dangly skull earrings, Wendie often had vacant eyes and nervous laughter that exposed the lost person she tried so hard to hide. Now I was the one who couldn't think straight, the one in need. She was God's idea of sending help.

I reintroduced myself and told her I knew her friend. She surveyed the results of my behind-the-wheel skills and must have thought, These Christians can't even drive right. Eighteen years of abuse and brushes with the dark side had left her cynical and angry. But they had not completely extinguished the reflection of the Creator in her soul. The flame flickered. My predicament touched a reachable part of her heart. She cared.

Wendie stayed with me through the whole ordeal. When the police questioned me, she stood by my side. When I had to leave the car, she offered to drive me into town. She drew one last drag off her ever-present cigarette and put it out. We sat in the Escort, the distorted noise of her heavy metal music blaring from the car's sound system. Two souls in need of rescue.

I found out later the music was a test. Wendie longed for someone to care genuinely about her, but expected a holier-than-thou arrogance from Christians. She waited for me to criticize her music. I never did. For a half hour we talked about her thoughts and feelings about life. I didn't know that that car ride was a turning point for her. She dropped me off at my meeting. A little later the overwhelming responsibility of having destroyed someone's car hit me, and my tears flowed.

Grace Received, Grace Extended
Dr. Thrash received news of the car accident a few days later on the way home from the airport. She took an immediate detour to view the remains. She called me the next day. The car was just a thing, she said. I wasn't to worry about it. She just wanted to know how I was doing. You simply don't know how to receive such complete forgiveness when you are so keenly aware of your guilt and there is no way to make things right. It is grace. Alone.

About five years later my good Samaritan totaled my own car. This time it was Wendie's turn to stare aghast at the crumpled hood of a car that was not hers. It was my turn to get news of my bereavement. I remembered my moment of grace and passed on the good news of forgiveness to her. The car was just a thing. Was she all right?

I wrote Dr. Thrash: "When I wrecked your car, I was guilty and naive. Guilty of the damage I had done, yet, never having owned a car, unable to comprehend the emotional or financial consequences I caused you. We are much that way with sin: completely guilty but only partially able to grasp the long-term influence of what we have done.

"You responded with complete forgiveness and grace. You bore the penalty of my transgression without my even realizing all it was costing you. How much like our Savior, who suffered more than we will ever understand and who meets our guilt and ignorance with the same kindness. The words He spoke on the cross, 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,' reach far beyond the circle of those who physically nailed Him to the cross.

"I don't know how I could have repaid you then or now. But I saw that I could pass on the same grace I had received without measure to another who was in need of it. So the chain of grace has another link in it and continues to grow."

Wendie and I say we met by accident. But I seriously doubt it. God was in hot pursuit of a wounded young person that day. He met her in a beat-up Escort, the chords of His gentle love drowning out even the deafening tones of Metallica and Iron Maiden. She began a journey that has led her to believe in Jesus. We were both rescued. We were both forgiven. The chain of grace is growing, link by link.

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Sofia Huenergardt writes from Burtonsville, Maryland.