Once there was a dad who, every morning on the way to school, would pray for safety on the road.
He was in a foreign country and the driving was the most dangerous part. Sometimes he’d even pray at other times of the day, ‘God, just keep me alive in this place for the sake of my children.’ He’d say that silently.
But in the mornings, just after breakfast and throwing the kids’ school bags in the car and driving down the bumpy little dirt road in front the house, on the way to school, he’d pray with his kids aloud.
Sometimes he’d even ask one of them to pray. ‘Who’s going to pray for our day?’ he’d ask, and one of the kids would start out, ‘Dear Jesus …’
Not that he believed prayer is some kind of magic or formula. The dad never believed that. He’d seen enough bad things happen to good people, people who prayed, and he knew this is the world that we live in, that the sun rises on the just and the unjust, and this is the only way, really, because otherwise on some days the sun wouldn’t rise on anybody.
But he’d seen too many mysterious things happen, even in his own life, as a result of prayer. Looking at things pragmatically, he also thought, well, really, it can’t hurt.
One day his kids got a new music teacher, an African man, who came to house to teach piano and guitar. ‘I’m lucky to be alive,’ the music teacher said. Then he explained that he and his wife and children were the only survivors in recent taxi-van accident.
It was a horrific accident. A large coffee truck hit the taxi-van head on. People to the front and back and right and left of that music teacher and his family were all killed, some in brutal fashion. But not this family. Nobody in his family was killed. The teacher showed the newspaper article about it. And he talked about his faith.
That pretty well clinched it for the dad. He’d keep praying for safety on the roads.
Another day he came across this video on the internet. For all the crap on the internet – ‘crap,’ that’s the word he used, he thought it was really something. So he shared it.
Not just because it shows something about safety. That’s a concern for parents everywhere around the world. But because he thought that it also touches on the love that a dad can feel, the sort of love that he himself said that he feels on plenty of days.
So this is what he did. The dad posted this video on his blog. He knew anyone who took a minute to look at it would remember it for a long time.