Traveling Mercies

My brother was joking the other day about being 41 years old and still not understanding what "traveling mercies" meant. The context is that as we were growing up, when a group of people would pray, they would often pray for "traveling mercies". There seem to be many things that we pray about, using words that may or may not make sense, but that focus on health and safety issue, physically, rather than the spiritual issues that the Bible says we should pray about. However, perhaps someone was praying for "traveling mercies" for me the other day?

On Tuesday night, I had just finished (or so I thought) a long trip home, with 4 other guys, from a conference in New York. It took us about 6 hours rather than the normal 5, because once we hit Pennsylvania, it began to snow. I was driving the whole way, and for much of the way home, I had both hands tightly wound around the wheel, praying our 15 passenger van would not go careening off the highway. I was very careful not to get too close behind any vehicle and I took it much slower than I really wanted to.

Once we got off the highway ramp, near the church, I was careful to slowly approach the stoplight and come to a safe stop. I was excited that we were almost there, and that I would soon be able to rest my eyes and stretch my legs. And then it happened:

CRASH! I felt my back buckle, although it did not hurt. We had just been back-ended by someone who claimed to have been "pumping the brakes" all the way down the ramp. Our back bumper was dented in pretty good and the front grill on her new car had some unintended holes in it now. But, no one was hurt, we were able to get the information needed, and then get everyone home fairly quickly.

Whatever traveling mercies are, perhaps that is what we experienced Tuesday night.
Thank you Lord that no one was hurt. Thank you that the damage to the vehicles was minimal.
Thank you for the time away at the conference, where I was able to get closer to these guys, and where we were able to be challenged to move forward in reaching others for you. If traveling mercies are those things that help people draw closer to you, then bring them on!