Perfect Timing, Part II

After that lovely adventure the other day of everything working out just barely and perfectly on time for my flight (here if you missed it), I was not expecting the evening to go differently.  Yet we arrived to pick up our rental truck and the place was closed, as it had been for the past three hours.  There was nothing obvious to be done and we still had an hour's drive to the hotel.

Then a truck appeared and I thought perhaps here was the solution, but it was too small and the people driving it were not employees.  So that fizzled out.

We ended up going to a restaurant to get dinner and wait it out.

After reinvigorating ourselves with much-needed sustenance and exploring various options, there seemed only one reasonable possibility.  So we ended up taking a car service to our hotel and having it arranged that we would pick up a truck the next day from a different company.

Our Lord could have arranged it all differently.  He could have provided someone there at the service center who could have given us a truck for example.  For some obscure reasons, He did not.  Why He arranged it thus I have absolutely no idea.  Yet why should I consider this experience any less a matter of His perfect plan than my earlier experience of everything working out according to my idea of perfect timing when He is the one who knows all?

In Thy perfect timing, Lord.

Perfect Timing

As I sat in the plane on the runway, we were early, but waiting for a gate, directed from runway to runway, waiting—waiting as the minutes slipped by. Soon all minutes gained in flight were lost. Anxiety began to beat within. I had a tight connection and I began to fear I would not make it.

In Thy perfect timing, Lord, I said and let peace return to my soul. If He willed that I should miss the flight, I would trust that it was better that way and that He had arranged it so for a reason.

By the time we finally got a gate, it was still twenty minutes until departure time for my connection, so I was not unduly worried, even though it took a few more minutes to unload. Rather than push past the people ahead of me, I waited patiently, trusting that those few extra seconds would make little difference.

Then I came to the monitor with flight times and gates listed. I found mine and stared for a moment unsure what to do, for under boarding it said CLOSED.  And I did not yet know whether I might have to go to another terminal by which time it would surely be too late.

Still I had to try.  What else was there to do?

By perfect orchestration my departure gate was only two gates down from the one at which I had arrived.  It was only a few steps from where I stood staring at the list of departures.

Hurrying to the gate, I found no one ready to let me on, so I went up to the counter.  Others stood before me and I decided not to wait my turn.  Instead, I headed directly to the jetbridge, as if to board, meaning to ask those lounging about there whether boarding was indeed closed.

A woman came over and asked my name and then told me they had been waiting for me.  Of course they had waited.  No anxiety had been necessary.  As usual, the Lord had it all in hand.

In Thy perfect timing, Lord.

Things later that evening did not go quite so much according to plan and work out so conveniently, but that is a story for another day....

In Thy perfect timing, Lord.