Joe told me to switch over to County frequency he was starting to loose me.

Chase continued:

I switched over and he told me that they had received a call from a lady that had been in the Laundromat.  The driver of the car in front of me had tried to rape her.  She said, “The guy in the car your officer is chasing tried to rape me. All of a sudden he let go of me and ran out the door.  I then saw the police car go by and then the police chased after him.”  She got to a pay phone and called the office.  Joe said she was coming in and he had already called the Detective Sergeant.

Well, now I knew why he was running.  We were on highway 197 with virtually no traffic.  Until after we passed Dufur, another 13 miles down the road, it was a fairly wide and easy highway.  I had never driven it at high speed, but I knew it was a relatively safe run.  When I didn’t try to pass him he once again sped up to about 100 mph.  I sat back for the ride, figuring we would be going until he either ran out of gas or off the road. 

He still did not have his headlights on, and I had been hitting his mirror with the spotlight, shining the reflected light into his eyes, as much as possible since leaving town.  How he could see the curves we were rounding I had no idea.  County had a deputy on, but he was a good nine miles away in the Rowena area, opposite direction from where we were heading, when the chase started.  I had not heard from the Sergeant.  I was still very much on my own, but Joe was on the radio.

We ran down a grade toward the intersection with Five Mile road, which is about five miles out.  As we came back over the grade on the south end and topped it, he suddenly hit his brakes and veered onto a dirt road to the right.  He almost didn’t make it.  He ran up over the hill on the left side of the road and it looked like his car would flip over on its top.  A spare tire that he had on the roof rack went flying off.  I was on my radio telling them we were taking a right on a dirt road and starting to call for an ambulance, when the car righted itself and away he went.  Now he turned his lights on.  We rounded a number of curves with him pulling slightly ahead of me and, at times, out of sight.  I came around one curve to find him crossways in the road, sliding.

I couldn’t get around him, there wasn’t any room, I had to either hit his car with the front of mine or try to also slide my car.  I decided to crank the wheel and slide, however, I wasn’t as fortunate as he was.  The tail end of my car dropped down over the shoulder; swapped ends and was heading straight down a steep hill.  I didn’t know how deep this ravine was and the only thing I could think of was “Lord here I come!”

To be continued:

Mark 13:72 And the second time the cock crew. And Peter called to mind the word that Jesus said unto him, Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice. And when he thought thereon, he wept.

As I read this verse I had to ask, when was the last time I wept tears for my betrayal of Christ?

Great tears of remorse followed by tears of joy fell from my eyes as I knelt that first time asking Jesus to forgive me and come into my heart.  I could not contain them; they were as a fountain flooding over my soul so it would be white and pure – free from the sins of my past.

We are saved by the Grace of God.  But I wonder if there are not times I take that Love too much for granted.

We sin and we know that going to Him with confession on our lips and a heart sorry for our sins will give us relief. 

The Jews had to sacrifice something each time they asked for forgiveness.  It was a physical act that was supposed to represent a heart desiring forgiveness from God.

Isaiah 1:11 To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.

But their sacrifices became, ‘the thing to do,’ all too frequently their heart was not in it.  They were giving sacrifices but they were not truly asking forgiveness – they were just going through the motions. 

But we often do the same thing; we know we have sinned, so we ask Jesus to forgive us – period.  We don’t take our sins seriously enough, we go through the act of confession but we don’t change our hearts. 

Our offering up of Christ as our sacrifice bears little resemblance to the sinner that accepted Him, the first time, as the sacrifice for our sins.

Psalm 51:17   The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

God wants a true sacrifice, from us.  Every sin we commit is an act of betrayal against God.  It isn’t a small thing; it is treason against our God.  It must be dealt with, by us, as sincerely as possible with a heart truly sorry for our unfaithfulness.

He wants us to ask His forgiveness with a heart that knows it has sinned against God.  A heart that knows he has failed God, has failed to do His Will.  A heart that wants to please God in everything we do and when we don’t He wants us to like Peter, crying tears that sting; that come deep from within because we have betrayed God.

Large tears that well up from deep inside because we have genuinely come to Him for forgiveness.  Asking God’s forgiveness because of the sacrifice of Jesus, must be genuine and not just habit.

Lord, may we never forget the price God paid in giving us salvation; the price that Jesus paid as He was humiliated and died on the cross.  May we never take lightly that sacrifice and may we never take lightly our salvation.

Later, Art :-)

From the ColumbiaRiverGorgeous
May Our Good Lord Bless and Keep YOU....’til we meet again