It was 10:30 PM, late at night, when the possum ran across the road. The dog was in hot pursuit and its human was a few steps behind. The human called out, but the possum was there, and the dog ran on in pursuit from behind the bush and brush. They tore across the road in an age-old chase repeated throughout time.

It was 10:30 PM, late at night, when the driver of the car listened to Defensive Driving advice from years before. The car went straight and the human and possum were unharmed. The dog in the rear of the car panicked and scrambled as the radiator began to pour fluid, the oil started to pour out, and the gasoline began to drip. The minister behind the wheel cried out and guided the car to the side of the road. He had been driving below the speed limit, but he didn’t see until the possum and dog broke through the brush onto the road. He was shaking as the gasoline fumes tickled his nose.

It was a few minutes after 10:30 PM, late at night, when the officer had a call to go to the site of an accident. He never had to put down a family’s pet before. He found the pastor who had been driving the car holding his dog as the one from the road screamed. He was shaking as he remembered the woman he almost hit and understood that if he had been a moment slower or faster, things would have possibly been far better or terribly worse. Why didn’t he stop for groceries? “All things in God’s time,” the officer told the minister who mumbled about free will half-heartedly. Even then, in the midst of grief, the minister knew this wasn’t the time to take away the officer’s comforting theology. He had practice at saying the right things even with a broken heart.

It was a few minutes after 10:30 PM, late at night, when the girlfriend hopped in her son’s car to come to the rescue. Just a few hours earlier the boyfriend behind the wheel had been helping her find a new car because her timing belt had gone awry in her steady old car. The car would be ready Monday, but it was the blackest of Fridays. It was nearly midnight when the borrowed car brought the two now carless people back to a quiet home with a frazzled dog. She sat with him until he was done shaking and crying about the fact that if things had gone wrong the dog owner could have died. She listened as he thought and sobbed about what would happen if the dog or woman had crashed through the window without setting things right with his son. It took a while.

It will be a little after 10:30, not so early in the morning thirty-six hours later, when the minister rises to share about how we, as a people, remember that Christ will come again in a moment. It will be a moment when he thinks about how the bell almost rang for him, a woman he doesn’t know, and did call home what looked to be a very enthusiastic dog whose family’s love showed he was a good boy. He probably won’t shed a tear, but he will hear the sound of a dog howling in the night.

Oh, when you come down
May that dog run home again 
to her happy tears.

Until you come down
May I never cause again
such awful pained cries.