Sweet Hitchhiker

Today, I did something I’ve never done before. I picked up a hitchhiker. Yes, yes, I know…you can’t be too safe. What was I thinking? Well, I’ll tell you.

I saw this man standing just outside of a town I was driving through, and I thought to myself, “Hmmm…then the King will say to you, ‘When I was hitchhiking, you gave me a ride,’ and the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord when did we ever see you hitchhiking?'”

So I started on my brakes, and then all the thoughts of safety went through my head. Of course, it wasn’t long ago that a friend and I had a discussion about safety and the Cross…nice. So after letting up on the brakes, I hit them again and backed up down the highway about forty feet.

The man, I’ll call him “Jim,” was a forty or fifty year old Creek Indian. He told me a little about his story, the work he had been doing, and a little bit about his fears for the Creek Nation. He didn’t ask me what I did; I didn’t tell him. He just asked my name and where I was from. When he got out at his girlfriends house (about a mile off the main highway) I started to say, “God bless you Jim,” but I didn’t. Instead, I said a silent prayer for him and drove off. That’s it.