A Whisper or a Brick – Communicating with God

Last night Marie was coming home with a pick-up truck load of groceries. It was late, it had been a busy day for both of us and she knew I was tired too; lugging a weeks worth of groceries up to our house from the workshop was not something I would be looking forward to. She reached over and pressed the Four Wheel High button on the dash – and it ENGAGED! This was a great surprise since it had been fluky for a while, working sometimes, not working at others, but mostly not. She happily swung into our driveway and came crawling up the steep gravel grade. I was working at the computer in our dining area, the windows of which look out over our driveway and I wondered who had gotten lost – I sure wasn’t expecting it to be Marie!

Our pick-up is a good truck, but like any aging motor vehicle it needs some attention. For one thing I’ve been concerned about the tires. There have been several times that I have looked the tires over to see if they appeared to be up to pressure that I could almost hear a whispered voice saying, “You need to replace those.” but before I got around to doing that the water pump went out and had to be replaced. And the four-wheel-drive was gone. We can not get the truck up our drive in two wheel drive, so we’ve been parking it at the workshop and walking back and forth, lugging groceries, toting trash and slogging through mud and snow all winter.

We were both pleased that the 4WD was working again, and rejoiced at being able to again unload groceries directly onto our front porch. But, this morning when we left to go to Newport together I tried to turn the 4WD off, and it would not disengage. It can be driven in this mode – up to 40 to 45 mph – for a while, but it is not designed to be used full time. For one thing, turning while in 4WD is very difficult because you feel like you’re dragging one front wheel – which is essentially what’s happening.

So after dropping Marie off I took it over to a repair shop we’d found to do good honest work and keeps their appointments. They were having an unusually slow morning – which in itself is odd – so there was no problem with them taking a look at it right away.

I was hoping it would be a simple thing, like a similar situation on a Blazer we had owned that turned out to be a vacuum line that had fallen off. I asked the manager about that possibility and he explained that Chevrolet had gone to an all electric system by the time this truck came out (it’s about 10 years newer than our Blazer was) and is controlled by a computer.

I cringed. “That’s expensive I bet.”

“Oh, yeah,” he agreed, “but not as expensive that the motor dealie on the transfer case that actually pulls the thing into gear: $558.00, my cost just for the part.”

They hooked the truck up to an R2-D2 unit and asked it what was wrong with the four wheel drive. It said, “It’s broke.” And refused to be any more specific.

There are three things that could be causing this problem: the switches in the dash, the motor thingie and the control module. They tried a new switch first; no help. Eliminate the cheap fix. The control module is an electronic part that once it’s installed cannot be returned for any reason because it’s just too easy to fry electronics by improper installation. But the parts manager let our mechanic “borrow” one of those $558 motor units saying, “Just don’t scratch it up putting it in. If it does not fix the problem then it’s your control module. Bring the new motor back and buy the module instead.” That is amazingly generous!

Just a few minutes after getting back with the part the mechanic came in and said, “This is your lucky day!” While taking the old motor apart he found that a screw inside the electrical connector had unscrewed itself and backed out, pushing the connector apart to where it was only getting intermittent connection. He screwed the screw back in and tested the system and it works fine, no other repair needed!

“But,” he said, “You need tires badly.” He took me out and showed me while it was up in the air; he was right, they were worse than I had guessed by casual inspection. So we ended up paying for a couple hours of diagnostic labor and four new tires, all of which cost us a couple hundred dollars less than the motor thingie alone would have cost.

Early this morning I was reading a newsletter our church sent out and one item in particular stood out. It was talking about how God will usually communicate with us in a whisper. If we are listening, this is all that is needed. If not, he may resort to throwing a brick at us. I figure the 4WD problem was God’s brick; it forced me to take the truck in for servicing that wasn’t really needed in order that I would have to attend to those tires before one or both of us were involved in some sort of accident. Looking back, I remember Him whispering to me, and I didn’t listen. I will endeavor to be more attentive to His whisperings in the future.