LAUGH AGAIN

When I was a kid my brothers liked to tell me stories of prison. For never being there, they sure knew a lot about it. They said inmates had escaped the nearby penitentiary and were headed this way. Backyard sleepovers had little appeal to me that summer. Other stories had to do with police officers making random arrests in our town, hand-cuffing boys who didn't seem particularly interested in attending school or church. I was terrified of the police as a child. So you can imagine my horror one summer vacation when we were driving along and suddenly red lights danced in our rearview.

Dad said, "Aw shoot!" which was pretty strong language for him.

Sure enough, a real live uniformed policeman stood at the open window like an A&W waitress, eyeing each of us with suspicion, then turning to my dad.

Now Dad was the product of a wild youth. He was not unfamiliar with the long arm of the law. But along the way he had experienced a spiritual transformation, so the thought of this Protestant boy speeding was unthinkable.

"They're gonna arrest Dad," my brother whispered. "But for what?" I wondered out loud.

If they had distracted driving laws in those days, Dad would be handed a life sentence. For one thing, we had a Titanic-sized Mercury station wagon and there were upwards of seventy-two of us in it at any given time. He must have felt like a zookeeper, transporting chimpanzees between animal sanctuaries.

The officer ran his eyes over Dad's driver's license. "Rev. Callaway, do you know why I've pulled you over?"

Reckless endangerment seemed a reasonable charge to me. Seatbelts were as rare as cruise control in those days. A few families used them. The same families that wore bike helmets and mostly stayed indoors. Rarely did one of us not have at least a head sticking out a window. Or both arms. Or we'd be attempting to crawl through the back window onto the luggage rack where we could hang by one knee while someone timed us. It's a wonder to look back and think to yourself, I lived, I lived. But at the time it all seemed perfectly normal.

"Rev. Callaway?" The officer was asking again. "Do you know what you've done?"

I held my breath, terrified, entertaining visions of visiting my father in prison. Maybe the officer knew about me. About the firecrackers I'd smuggled across the border or something worse.

"You were going too s-l-o-w," the officer said.

I fully intended to stay completely quiet, incognito. But a laugh worked itself into my stomach. From there it spread to my joints and limbs and burst forth from my windpipe. "Too slow?" I laughed. "Too slow?"

As it turned out, our speedometer had ceased functioning and my father, the most law-abiding of citizens, in the act of attempting to ensure he was not speeding, became the only man I've ever met to almost be arrested for not keeping up with traffic.

Is there anything in the world like watching a gavel stop mid-swing? Judgment was about to fall. Mercy arrived. Because of someone else's righteousness we are free. I'm not sure there's a better reason to laugh. In the Bible Titus 3:5 tells us, "God saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy." Because of what Jesus did, my record is clean. Because of mercy, I have nothing to fear and everything to smile about. I think I'll grab the car keys and the kids and go celebrate with some ice cream. This time we'll be wearing seat belts.

Phil Callaway is a speaker, best-selling author, and host of Laugh Again Radio. Check it out at laughagain.org