Guest Rambler: Chazzan AJ Bulua
Deflated in Pennsylvania
When I read Rabbi Koval’s ramble about the moon prayer in Jerusalem, it brought me back to a "divine providence" story my family experienced last year. It was one of those stories where we truly saw G-d’s hand so openly. Without the pictures, I don’t know if we would believe it ourselves.
Last June, we were on a family road trip and set to spend our first night in Ashland, PA. We had just left Knoeble's Amusement Park (after an excellent family stop) when the tire pressure light came on. At first, we thought it was just the sensor being sensitive because it’s happened before, but after several miles we pulled over and noticed that one tire was a bit low.
We had a long drive ahead of us, as we planned to be on the road for the next week, and we were already several hundred miles away from home. I thought we would just try to get to our lodging for the night and deal with the tire the next day, if needed. Oy vey! What was I thinking? I figured we had enough air in the tire to get us to our destination for the night just 30 miles away. We were tired, hungry and just wanted to put our heads down.
The next morning, we took a quick look, and the tire was almost out of air. So almost as soon we pulled out of the driveway we pulled over on the country back road we were now on to start looking for a gas station or anyone that could help us. No sooner did we start looking on google maps than low and behold, across the road from us was a sign for a service station! It didn’t look particularly active, but we immediately pulled in. We didn’t really have much choice. There was no way we were going to make it any further.
As we pulled in, the proprietor, Eric, came out and offered his services. Within a few minutes he had the tire off the car, with us still in it (and the car still running). He quickly determined that the tire was finished. The internal metal bands were exposed, and the tire was unfixable. We were lucky we had made it this far. We began to think, “Oy vey, G-d! We are stuck in middle of PA, literally, with a weeklong trip ahead of us.” We were even going to be late for our coal mine tour that was scheduled for a 1/2 hour later. (I know, I know, priorities.)
Next thing we know, Eric comes out from the back of his shop walking a tire. I am thinking, oy, we are about to be hosed. Here we are in middle of nowhere at this person’s mercy. Instead, Eric says, "I think I have a tire for you and I can put it on for just $35 if you want! Just two weeks ago a woman came in and wanted new tires. Her tires weren’t bad, but she was worried about the winter (this is in the middle of June), so we put new tires on her car, but I kept the old ones because you never know…."
Here we are, just minutes earlier thinking that G-d had left us hanging, and now we were practically dancing. $35 to get a new tire! But it was about to get much better. Eric continued, “You are lucky you came today, because we just got back from vacation last night!!!” We couldn’t believe it! This was too much! This was so openly divine providence. This was perfectly choreographed by the Master Choreographer. Eric put on our tire in record time, and we hurried off to our mine tour, which we made just in time.
The Talmud teaches that G-d creates the cure before the illness. In our story, we saw that firsthand. The parts of the story came together only once we were in need, but the cure was already prepared before we had our flat tire. Eric scheduled his vacation plans, and someone brought him perfectly good tires that fit our van, just two weeks before. All of that waiting for us, for that moment. Who knew?
On the way to our next stop we had a minute to think about the import of our morning’s events when we realized we didn’t even take a minute to properly thank Eric. So we detoured back to his shop where we apologized for hurrying away, thanked him properly, spent some time schmoozing, and even grabbed a selfie. Thank G-d! It was an excellent start to our trip and a wonderful reminder that He is watching over all of us each and every day.
Shabbat Shalom,
Chazzan AJ
