I have been doing some part-time welding on trucks at my brother-in law’s shop at the old Frank’s Place building near Long Island, VA. Such was the case on August 18, 2016 at about 3:00 PM. It was the day before my birthday, which I share with Paul, Janna, and Bill! I was just beginning to weld several crosspieces that had cracked loose on the under side of a box truck body near the front. The body was sitting loose on the frame of the truck and was not fully forward in its normal position. The truck that I was working on was in a paved parking lot between the shop and Long Island Road. The building is about fifty feet from the highway and parallel to it. The truck was parked at an angle between the building and the road. The right front corner was only a couple feet from the building, and the left rear corner of the box was less than twenty feet from the road. Just ahead of my truck, a tandem road tractor was parked, its back end near the shop and facing the road, perpendicular to both.

I was working under the left front corner of the box with my back turned toward the road. My field of vision was pavement, truck frame, and a truck axle with wheels. Squalling tires suddenly interrupted my concentration. As I glanced over my right shoulder, a car darted past. Right behind it came a jack-knifing red road tractor with an empty flat-bed trailer. It was fully jack-knifed as it left the highway and angled toward the shop. No human being had any control after that point. I only had time for two very brief thoughts. First, I was relieved to see that the rig would clear the corner of the box by a few feet. Secondly, I figured that the rig would hit the parked road tractor broadside and then everything would stop. I instinctively hunkered down for the final impact. As it came to rest, the front left corner of the Ford caught the left rear corner of the cab of the box truck and moved it a foot or so. The parked road tractor absorbed most of the impact.

Now that everything had stopped moving, I crawled out to see how the truck driver was doing. He too was unscathed. He was able to open his driver’s door and step across the back of the other road tractor. The driver of the car, who had pulled out in front of him, was next on the scene. He likewise was relieved that no one was hurt. My first contemplative thought was that I had miraculously escaped death or serious injury. The next thing that popped into my mind was the line from Robert Frost,”I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.”

Throughout the few seconds that it took for all of this to happen,God gave me an incredible sense of calmness. My eyes hadn’t followed the final second of the wreck, so I don’t have a picture imprinted in my brain of the rig’s final trajectory, which was much closer to me than I had expected.The nearest corner of the jack-knifed truck came within a foot or two of me as it slid past. The welder, which had been beside me, got smacked under the front part of the box truck. The front tire skid-marks of the Ford crossed a few feet after it left the highway,indicating that the left front tire was leading its mate for the rest of the slide. After all this analysis, God still gave me peace. Why be shaken by what could have been when God has already effected the best possible outcome?

Sunday was the third day after the accident. Our family was on vacationing on Hilton Head Island, SC. I thought about where I might have been that day. I could have been lying in a hospital ICU with an anxious family around me. My body could have been in a casket at a funeral. (“To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”) But I wasn’t in either of those scenarios. I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep.

All of us are alike in this, although not so dramatically reminded. We have promises to keep, and God has given us time to be faithful in keeping them. We have (or should have) made promises to God in response to His promises to us. We have promises in relationships——spouses,children, parents, others. We don’t know how many miles we have left, but we are aware of the promises we have to keep. May we resolve to be faithful in keeping them!