It is Monday, February 25, and I am home again after my usual two week stint out on the road. Tomorrow it is back to work.
This trip began in Houston with a load to an oil distributor/blender in Atlanta. I remember that during the unload one of the distributor's employees pointed out a great hawk perched in the branches across the rail road tracks from the unloading point, remarking that he had seen the hawk take pigeons in mid air. After studying this scene for a moment, I remarked to one of the other employees as I walked back to my truck that the Bible tells us that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our heavenly father knowing it. The employee looked up and said, "That is what our pastor preached about on Sunday."
After the unload I picked up a clean tank trailer at the Atlanta area tankwash. At the tankwash, I found another company driver named Greg waiting on a load assignment. Greg was a relatively new driver and remembered meeting me before. He shared some of the difficulties he had encountered. Greg was without a full bible so I gave him one of the paperbacks I carry in the truck with a couple of tracts for bookmarks. We prayed together before we parted company.
Now it was off to Chester, South Carolina. There my trailer was loaded and I was off to a paper mill in southwest Ohio. This meant heading up through West Virginia and trying some new "small road" (non-interstate), but God was gracious to me in providing some advice from other drivers about the proper route and the drive was pleasant.
At the paper mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, the unloader was in a hurry. It was Saturday morning and he had been called from his house to supervise the unloading. He wanted to use some methods which would have been faster, but less safe. God graciously granted me the wisdom to stand my ground and do it the right way. I sensed no opportunity for witness at this location.
Then it was off to the tankwash in Pittsburgh to drop the dirty empty trailer and pick up a clean one; and then off to Painesville, Ohio, to get loaded. At Painesville, I left a tract pinned on the bulletin board in the driver waiting area. Now it was off to Beaumont, Texas.
A Wednesday delivery in Beaumont is problematic because it has me back too close to the house too soon. There is no opportunity then for my company to send me out on a run of any length (and I am paid by the mile). But God is in charge of my dispatching. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and is quite capable of providing me with miles, or a lack of miles, if he sees fit. (Psalm 50:10).
On the way from Painesville to Beaumont I stopped at the tankwash in Louisville, Kentucky. The tankwash in Pittsburgh had been closed when I arrived Saturday afternoon and an error in the work assignment provided by my company caused both my company and I to think that I needed to stop enroute to have a clean pump. As always, God was quite in charge of the error and the detour into the tankwash in Kentucky. There I met another driver, a fourteen year veteran named Tommy. He was waiting on a load. I gave him a tract before leaving (little did I know I would see Tommy again when I pulled into Houston).
In Beaumont I was safely unloaded, and now it was back to Houston. In Houston, I picked up and empty compartment trailer and headed to load at a Houston area plant. Alas, I would be spending the night at the plant instead of with my wife and children - so close and yet so far ...
Thursday morning and it was off to drop the loaded trailer at our New Orleans area terminal. Then I waited for a relay trailer to arrive and it was off, through Houston, to Point Comfort, Texas. It was a blind shipment and I was to stop at a customer in Houston to get the trailer retagged and to receive new bills of lading. In Houston, I was delayed, but I was soon to see God's hand in the delays. There was an hour and half wait at the Houston customer while we waited for a clerk to come back from lunch to reissue the bills. This, in turn, pushed me into Friday afternoon rush hour traffic snarled by several accidents. All of this, in turn, pushed me into Point Comfort after a 4:30 pm shift change. But I think God wanted me to get there after shift change.
The night unloader was named Edwin. It was a slow, thick product, so with the pump running at half speed or less we had a lot of time to talk while the pump churned its way through the 5000 gallons of resin. There had been trouble at the plant earlier in the day caused by human error, apparently caused by combinations of haste, greed and laziness. I remarked to Edwin that the Bible was still, though thousands of years old, the most accurate predicter of human nature. Edwin said little at first, but towards the end, as I was putting up my hoses, Edwin revealed that his father had been a pastor. I had the chance to encourage Edwin to renew his study of the Bible to become thoroughly equipped. We prayed together before I left.
And then it was back to Houston and to the house ...
Stay tuned to see if God has planned any more divine appointments for the next trip.
