Jesus on a broke down bus in Louisiana

Occasionally, life hand us a line that will make an excellent country song. Our church youth group had a fantastic week with 17,000 other kids in Birmingham. Things went so smoothly that you might have thought all the teenagers were filled with the Holy Spirit and stayed full. That is about as likely as a Central Texas rainstorm in July, which you may know we just had.

I’m told that the conference was spectacular. The preaching was on target. The worship was inspirational. The kids behaved! The adults behaved!! Thousands gave their lives to Christ, thousands more recommitted, and pretty much the whole stadium bought in on the final night and agreed that living for Jesus beats living for the Devil and they took a stand to that effect.

On the long drive home, the bus broke down somewhere in the not-so-good part of South Louisiana. A State Trooper happened by and stood guard. Evidently, the area where the bus broke down had seen a lot of trouble recently. I’m told that the kids used the time to sing praises to Jesus. All I can say is that the adults must have thought they’d all died and gone to heaven. No exhausted whining—singing.

To have the kids end the week in the way they did is a profound mystery. Why were the prayers for safe, easy travel not granted? Why could the prayers, prophets, healers, and helpers on the bus not heal the bus? Well, I think maybe we’re asking the wrong question because most of us—me anyway—tend to view inconveniences as out of God’s will when in fact, they’re only out of our will. Mysterious is it not? 

If we start by trusting God with circumstances, we realize that it could be that a broken bus was the one nudge needed by one kid who will now commit and not just please their friends, and that one will go on to do something God needs them to do. It could also be the surprise misadventure that forever triggers memories of God’s steadfast love and keeps a fired up teenager from becoming an idiot in their adult years. Perhaps you, like me, noticed that, “Jesus on a broke down bus in Louisiana” sounds a lot like a country-faith song. Maybe the next Brandon Lake was on the bus, writing. One can hope.