Will You Answer

It was about a week before Christmas. Cold enough that your breath hung in the air, but not cold enough to keep people from rushing from store to store trying to finish their shopping before the holiday arrived. That afternoon, I had stopped by the bank. I withdrew three brand-new one hundred dollar bills — crisp, perfectly flat, fresh from the teller’s drawer. My plan was simple. I was going to tuck them into Christmas cards for my kids. After leaving the bank, I stopped at a gas station to fill up my truck before heading home. While the pump clicked steadily beside me, I noticed a woman standing near the entrance of the convenience store. She looked nervous, almost embarrassed, as she spoke to a man walking out the door with a cup of coffee in his hand. He listened for only a few seconds before giving her an uncomfortable wave and continuing on to his car without another word. A few feet away sat an older sedan parked at the pump beside mine. The car had clearly seen better days. The paint was faded and dull. Scratches ran along the side panels. One hubcap was missing. But what caught my attention most were the tires. The rear tire closest to me was nearly destroyed. The tread had worn so thin that the nylon cords were showing through the rubber. It looked like the kind of tire that could blow out at highway speed without warning. When I finished pumping gas, I started toward the store. Before I reached the door, the woman stepped carefully toward me. You could tell she hated asking. She explained that she was trying to get home to visit family for Christmas. She still had two or three hours left to drive. Then she glanced toward her car and admitted what I already knew — the tire wasn’t safe. Right beside the gas station was a small used tire shop. She said the owner there had agreed to replace the bad tire for forty dollars. She had been trying to collect enough money to pay for it. Then, almost apologetically, she asked if I had a couple dollars I could spare. I stood there for a moment. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet. My intention was to give her the four one-dollar bills I knew I had tucked behind my driver’s license. But as my fingers slid into the wallet… something changed. Instead of grabbing the singles, I pulled out the three crisp one hundred dollar bills I had just gotten from the bank. I handed all three of them to her. For a second, she just stared at the money like she didn’t understand what she was looking at. I told her, “Fill your tank with gas. Go next door and get your tire fixed. And after that, there’s a Burger King over there. Get yourself something hot to eat before you get back on the road.” Her eyes widened instantly. Then she started crying. Not polite tears. Not the kind people try to hide. The kind that come from carrying too much weight for too long. She threw her arms around me and buried her face against my chest, sobbing. And standing there in the middle of that gas station parking lot, a week before Christmas, I wrapped my arms around her and held her while she cried. Truthfully… I cried too. For a few moments, two strangers just stood there under the fluorescent lights while traffic passed by and people hurried in and out of the store, unaware of what was happening beside them. Finally, she pulled herself together enough to step back. I smiled at her and told her to drive safe. Then I said, “God’s watching out for you.” And for the rest of that Christmas season, I never once missed those three hundred dollars.