Have you ever forgotten a significant event in your life until someone or something prompted you to remember it?

I have. It happened just a few days ago.

I had just returned to my hometown of Greenville, South Carolina, to attend my 45^th high school reunion. The day before the celebration, a good friend was kind enough to take me for a drive to the beautiful mountains just north of the city and a few miles from the North Carolina line.

As we came around the corner on Highway 25, I saw a bridge crossing the road ahead, and instantly my mind flashed back to January 1977.

A college friend named Malcolm was visiting me over the Christmas holidays. It had just snowed, and the Alabama native wanted to go for a winter wonderland cruise up Highway 25. Just as we emerged from under that same bridge, a flying object shattered our windshield. We didn’t get hurt, but pulled over right away. Looking back to the bridge, we saw three boys dropping snowballs containing big rocks onto the passing cars below. When they saw us pointing at them, they took off running.

Malcolm was livid and decided to go after the perpetrators. He sped off for the next exit, turned onto the frontage road toward the bridge and put the pedal to the metal. Malcolm was clearly letting his rage overtake his reason because we were driving entirely too fast for the snowy conditions.

As we cruised toward the bridge, the road curved… but we didn’t. The car literally went airborne like the orange ’69 Dodge Charger in the Dukes of Hazzard TV show.

We sailed over an embankment as if we were flying in slow motion. There was no time to think, react or even scream about the landing. We were utterly powerless, completely helpless and totally at the mercy of God.

Amazingly, the car made a soft, safe landing in a massive patch of snow-covered kudzu. That’s right, kudzu. That ugly, creeping vine that overtakes fields, trees, powerlines, abandoned cars, houses and just about anything in its path. Kudzu, one of the great eyesores of the south, had just saved my life.

The car was totaled, but neither Malcolm nor I were hurt. We got out of the car, crawled out of the kudzu jungle and started hitchhiking to the nearest pay phone to call a wrecker. We never did get to confront the kids who nearly killed us, but who cares? We were just thankful to have endured both accidents without a scratch.

As I recounted this story to my friend about how God graciously spared out lives that winter day in 1977, I felt embarrassed and ashamed that I had virtually erased that memory for the last 42 years. God mercifully saved me, and I completely forgot about it.

The more I pondered this harsh truth, it occurred to me that I do the same thing about my salvation. Christ died for me. I put my faith in Him, and He saved me. I was powerless and helpless. I wasn’t good enough to save myself, but Christ was.

But I often forget about how Christ brought me out of spiritual death into spiritual life because I’m so distracted or focused on other less important matters – like what I want to do, where I want to go, what I want to feel, etc. It’s so easy to be so self-focused to the point of squeezing God out of my consciousness.

It turns out that I’m not the only one who forgets. The children of Israel did this a lot. That’s why Moses gave them this warning in Deuteronomy 8:14 — “…make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, the God who delivered you.”

That warning – don’t forget the God who delivered you – applies to me and everyone who has been saved by the grace of God through Christ.

But Jesus takes this warning a step further. He doesn’t just warn us about forgetting, but He chides us for failing to love Him like we did when He first saved us. He says in Revelation 2:4-5, “But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore, remember from where you have fallen….”

I am so thankful that God graciously prodded my memory about the day he used kudzu to save me, because it forced me to remember how gloriously Christ saved me and prepared a home in heaven with Him.

Saved by grace and saved by kudzu.

May I never forget that. May I never forget God. May I never forget the sacrifice of Christ. And may I never lose my love for Him.