Gas prices change our habits. Friends who live half an hour from us were heading on a vacation trip yesterday. They happened to have both vans near our home but were leaving in the opposite direction. To save an hour's time and gas, they called us yesterday, "Can we park our 2nd van at your house for the week?"
We said yes. No one has asked us something like that before. But I think we will all grow more accustomed to such calls. They dropped off the van and commented if we needed to borrow it for an emergency, no problem.
This morning, I was heading out of state to teach for the morning. Our kids had early swimming, and I took them on my way out of town. Our plan was for my husband to pick them up when they were finished to get them home.
Since we homeschool and have a home business, we haven't worried much that our second car is an antique, as old as our marriage. This morning, he tried to start it before I left, and the engine wouldn't budge. It most likely needs a new battery.
But I had to get to my class, and we needed him to pick up the kids.
By Divine Providence, God left a van in our driveway yesterday so we could get them.
After I took the kids to swimming, my friend on vacation called. I shared our situation with her, and she marveled that she suddenly thought yesterday to leave their van at our home. They had never done such a thing before either.
So on my way to work, I gave a quick prayer of thanks. In the still, small quiet of a car without chattering children, I heard an answer to that prayer.
"I said I would get them home. I didn't tell you how I would get them there."
How true that is. We trust in God to bring us and our families home. That is the most important goal any of us should have.
Sometimes He may re-align the chessboard of our lives and friends. Other times, He may drop a van into our driveway just before we need it. In either case, He handles the details and just asks us to believe, to trust, and to work with whatever He puts in our path.
May God, in His time and by His ways, bring us and all our children home.
"In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know .
Thomas saith unto him, ‘Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?'
Jesus saith unto him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.' " -John 14:2-7
Leave it to Jesus and His Father to teach the big lessons through something as simple as a spare van in a driveway. Through Him, the invisible is made visible, and the common becomes so extraordinary that it is divine.
