One Lane Road – Traffic Control - Six Minutes

The other day I was driving on a road that was being repaved with asphalt. Since it was a two-lane road one section of the road was paved while the other served to carry traffic. Since years of experience have yielded the lesson that cars going in opposite directions in the same lane run into each other, the paving contractor established traffic control at both ends of the single lane – the control consisting of a man with a two-sided sign on a pole, one side said “Slow” and the other “Stop”. Since the traffic lane was about two miles long the contractor also had a “pilot truck” to lead the traffic, first one way and then the next way.

I slowly approached the man with the “Stop” sign and braked where he motioned me – I was the first car in line. The man came up to my window and said, “It will be about six minutes before the pilot truck comes back, just thought I’d let you know.”

“Thanks,” I replied. Then I said, “You know, six minutes is nothing compared to eternity.”

He agreed with that as he walked back to the front of my car with his sign. Then I said, loudly so that he could hear me, “I like praying for people. Is there anything I can pray for?”

“Not really. Things are good with me and my family.”

“Ok, that’s great. I’ll pray that God will draw you closer to Him and take care of you and your family.”

With that he moved back toward my window and we talked about the Lord. Then he said, “You know, this has been a good day and people have been nice. Sometimes they aren’t nice when they have to wait. I’ve found that somehow the way the person in the first car is influences the way the rest of the people are.”

Now I don’t pretend to know how that could be, this idea that the person in the first car influences all the rest of the people, but this gentleman had firsthand experience and I don’t. I’ll take it as a reminder that you never know, you just never know, what you’ll come upon during the day and who you might be a blessing to and who you might influence. Six minutes is nothing when compared to eternity, but eternity can invade six minutes.