A Little Traffic Snarl - and a Big Lesson

Brenda and I decided to return to VA a full day earlier than originally planned due to the threat of snow along most of our route.  We ran into rush-hour traffic in Birmingham, but made if very well up past Bristol, VA.  Just north of Bristol, it started snowing.  It wasn’t snowing hard, and it was cold enough that I didn’t even have to turn on my windshield wipers.

I was marveling at how well things were going.  It was a bit after 1 AM when I saw some tail lights ahead, nothing abnormal about that, but these were stopped in I-81 all lanes going north.

Uh-oh!!

Uh-oh indeed.  I was maybe the 20^th car lined up in my lane, but traffic was totally stopped.  As in totally stopped for over 2.5 hours!!

A professional driver of a big rig had managed to turn his truck on its side, and block all three north-bound lanes.  As we sat, we saw wreckers and ambulances and one fire truck all heading to the scene.

So, we sat.   And sat… and sat…and sat.  We did a LOT of sitting.  This was one of those situations wherein we can do nothing.  Well, we did pray.

This is a parable for the age.  We control very little in this world.  We don’t control the weather which sent us up early.  We don’t control the driver who turned over his truck, nor the most inconvenient place where he did it.  Had we been 20 minutes earlier, we would have missed it.  Had we been 3 hours later, we would have missed it too.  Had we been stopped a bit further down the road, we could have exited the Interstate and gotten home via back roads, a little slower, but not 3 hours late!

We control but very little.  We are subject to the vagaries of life.  Except, of course, G^d is Sovereign. He controls all, and He is aware of our circumstances.  There’s no point in fuming, getting frustrated, or raging against the circumstances.

G^d is in Control and we are not.  Let’s not forget that!