I walked into a tiny café and asked the attendant for morning tea. The café was crowded but two men sitting at a table for three, pulled aside the spare chair and invited me into their space.
Thanking them I sat down and, as an invitation to friendliness, Mr. Suit-Clad told me he his friend, Mr. Clue-Collar, was a carpenter working on installations next door, and he himself had been a finance negotiator.
“And then,” said unemployed Mr. Suit-Clad, quoting a common Australian expression, “the wheels came off.”
I joined in the friendly spirit of the morning, I asked them, “Do you know where that saying comes from?”
“What?” asked Mr. Blue-Collar, “you mean ‘the wheels came off’?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“It’s just a saying,” said Mr. Suit-Man. “We have used it for generations. I remember my Grandfather saying it when I was just a lad. So where did it come from?”
“It goes back to the time of Moses,” I began.
“Moses?” exclaimed Mr. Blue-Collar in disbelief.
“Yes,” I replied. “Do you remember the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt with Moses leading them?”
Both men nodded, remembering their earlier years at church.
“Well,” I went on, “the Lord had done incredible miracles when the Israelites were in slavery to the Egyptians. Then, when the Israelites left, they took great wealth and all their livestock with them…’The Lord went with them as a pillar of cloud to keep them shaded during the day and as a pillar of light to guard them at night. When they came to the Red Sea, the Lord led them across on a pathway through the water.'”
Both men nodded as they remembered their Scripture classes.
“The Egyptians were bearing down,” I went on. “They were riding in chariots with galloping horses as any formidable army should in those days. Then they began to cross on the pathway of the Israelites through the Red Sea. Do you know what the Lord did then?”
“No,” said Mr. Suit-Man-man under his breath. “What did He do?”
“The Lord,” and I made quotation marks in the air with my fingers, “who ‘went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them.’ Instead of being in front of them, He went to the back of them. And then, can you believe it? the Lord ‘took off their chariot wheels.’ (Exodus 14:18-25.)
The Egyptians were stuck because ‘the wheels came off!'”
Mr. Suit-Man suppressed his laughter and Mr. Blue-Collar laughed aloud.
“So that’s where the saying comes from!” said Mr. Blue-Collar Carpenter as he took my docket with theirs to pay the bill.
We went our separate ways and I thought of the other Blue-Collar Carpenter who has put the wheels back on so that we can travel with Him, to “meet the Lord in the air and ever be with Him” (1st Thessalonians 4:17).
Elizabeth Price