Let me tell you about a friend I enjoyed getting to know a lot while I was in Haiti. He didn’t actually know who I was but I knew his name. He was always with us whenever we went anywhere for ministry. He bumped with us to the top of the steep mountainous path to the Deluge JAM club. He zipped us to St. Marc a few times so we could use the ATM. He helped us get to church on time. Once he got us through a busy Saturday afternoon market street when we met up with a big truck that wasn’t about to back up – so we did. He adventured with us to the lovely waterfall which required lots of careful maneuvering over the very bumpy and sometimes washed out road.
I found lots of comfort in being with Sam. He didn’t do anything for me in particular except be his faithful self. He let me ride on top of the bars at the very top of the truck, where I could hang on for dear life while the wind tried desperately to blow me off. He let us have a wonderful time singing in the wind on the way home from working with kids.
Yes, you might have guessed. Sam is a truck. A pickup truck with welded high sides, seats along the bed, and a rack over the cab. His name is a tad generic (Supply and Multiply, thus SAM), but to me, I will always think back to the moments of quiet thrill that went through me as the wind made a mess of my hair and I had to clamp my mouth shut to avoid bugs lodging in my throat due to the high speed. I will also remember the times when Shamma had to pause a bit, get some speed, and drive carefully through the large ruts in the road. Even though Sam sometimes made loud squealing, protesting noises, he still always faithfully plodded along and got us to our destination.
Why do I write to you about Sam?
I think it might be because I learned from him to trust God, the driver of my life. Sam didn’t always have the easiest time getting us around, but he did. We weighed him down with quite a few people. We loaded a bunch of rocks into the bed and then all climbed on top of that yet. How did Sam do all this? Yes, he had a lot of responsibility and ‘the weight of the world’ that he carried around, but did he let it stop him? No. He trusted his driver, Shamma, to look ahead at the road and take the best path, to not make him do anything that his ‘horsepower’ couldn’t handle.
Isn’t this like our life? We need to trust God to choose the best path, to weigh us down but to always give us enough strength to keep going, to allow a few squeals maybe but to be OK with a bit of pain because that’s how we get stronger. Also God will be our mechanic and make sure our insides work just how he designed them to.
Yes, I know Sam is not a person really, but he very much encouraged me this last month!
