By Dave Bowman 

A few years ago I was loading a shipment of household goods out of Seattle, WA. We set some cartons out on the driveway as a staging area as we loaded the truck. It started out as a beautiful day until about 4 hours into the load when a raincloud suddenly came up and started a downpour. As my helpers and myself scrambled to get the cartons into the garage, I could just imagine a claim for water damaged goods in my next commission statement and wondered like a lot of people, "Why me, God?". We waited for about 20 minutes for it to stop and continued to load. After a long, tiring day, I made it to the Flying J in Ellensburg. I went into the restaurant to grab a bite to eat before crawling into the sleeper to rest my poor aching body.  As I entered the restaurant, there wasn't very many people there since it was late, but all the tables were dirty except one, so I sat down and ordered. After dinner, I opened a book to read for a few minutes before going to bed. Just then another trucker came in and looked around. All the tables were still cluttered so I told him he could sit at the table with me. After he ordered, we started talking about various things until the conversation came around to the general state of the world and how things seemed to be getting bad in a lot of ways. That was the opening I needed.  I mentioned some of the events spoken of in the book of Revelation and from there was able to present the Gospel to him. 

As I told him about how Jesus Christ had died to pay for our sins, and being saved is simply a matter of trusting Jesus Christ to save you, it was as if a light bulb suddenly turned on inside his head. He said, " You know, I've heard that before, but until now I never really understood it and what it is all about."

We continued to talk for a while before I left. As I was walking back to the truck it was as if the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said: "Now see, if you hadn't been delayed 20 minutes by that rain this afternoon, you would have been gone by the time that trucker got there and he wouldn't have heard the Gospel." It wasn't in those exact words. God doesn't necessarily speak that way.  It comes as a flash of insight most of the time. But it was a message from Him just the same. How many of you other truckers could give a similar story about how a delay was God's way of providing a divine appointment to witness or help someone?

By the way...none of the cartons or contents were damaged from the rain earlier in the day. Like most of the worries we have, most never come to past.