God’s Favor

There’s the old joke about the man who is stranded in a flood. First, a guy in a canoe comes by and offers to help him.

“God will provide for me,” he says as he turns down the canoe ride.

Then a second guy comes by in a row boat and offers a ride.

“God will provide for me,” he says as he turns the ride down.

Then the guy has to go up into the attic as the flood waters rise. He ends up on the roof.

A helicopter comes for him, and he says, “No thank you, God will save me.”

The guy drowns and ends up at the pearly gates of Heaven.

“Why didn’t you save me?” the guy asks God.

“I sent you a canoe, a row boat and a helicopter,” God says.

Now to real life. It’s 35 years ago, and my firstborn is the youngest child in her kindergarten class at a private Christian school in town. The oldest kid in class lives nearby. The two of them share an October birthday.

Stacy’s mom asks me to carpool with her. I drive them to school and she brings them home.

This works out for a few weeks, and then one day my oldest walks in the door and says, “Mom, Mrs. Crumplebink didn’t make me wear my seat belt, even on the freeway.”

“What?” I say, stupefied.

I call up the mom and repeat what my daughter has said. “Is it true that you didn’t put her seatbelt on her for the ride home?”

“God will protect us,” the mom said.

Silence. I don’t know what to say. Then I say it.

“I don’t want to carpool anymore.”

Recently, I was in a doctor’s office (he’s a member of a particular church in town). His wife and I were chatting about skin cancer, since I always wear a big hat after three skin cancer surgeries.

She said, “I wonder what causes skin cancer.”

“You know,” I said, “the UV rays from the sun.”

She looked at me and said, “I don’t think God would give us the sun if he knew it caused skin cancer. It must be something in our food.”

Me speechless. Had she never taken a science class?

These three things came together for me this morning as I was brushing my teeth. You never know when you’re going to get a blog post idea.

As a disclaimer, I am not an atheist. I am a questioning Christian, in the sense that I believe in the Christian values but don’t necessarily believe that praying to God is going to win me any favors.

I will get in the canoe or the boat or the helicopter.

And this girl hates to fly.