Trip of Troubles, God Was There

For the Lord your God moves about in your camp to protect you and to deliver your enemies to you. Deuteronomy 23:14

We recently traveled to see an ailing brother. The trip was not planned and we hurriedly set it in motion. Eight times during the trip we came across a large NO, YOU CANNOT DO AS YOU WISH. However, as you will note in this devotion, God was bigger than the NOES.


NO-you are at the wrong airport. We asked for a ticket out of Omaha but found out after driving through rush hour traffic in OMA airport to find out they issued us a flight out of Lincoln, LNK. God delayed the plane out of Lincoln so we barely made the flight after another trip through Omaha rush hour and 80-mile-an-hour traffic to LNK. We only had time to carry our bags on and leave.                                                                              
NO-you didn’t make the connecting flight in Denver. You might be able to get on standby.


NO-although you have been waiting in the cold watching your breath for more than an hour, the ticket holders arrived and the plane is full. We will provide hotel and food for you. We had good lodging.


NO-there is no flight out of Denver before 3:15 pm tomorrow. While we waited in Denver, our brother was dismissed from the hospital and was brought to his retirement community Health Care center.


NO-in spite of the fact every rental car company was represented in the center at Albuquerque after taking a shuttle there, not one car was available to rent. 


NO-you can’t get your phone to load the Uber App to get a ride. You can only get the sign up to drive for Uber. A nice shuttle man took the two of us in his big empty shuttle back to the airport taxi lane.


NO-there is not enough time to find a hotel and you don’t have a car. A nice taxi man took us to the retirement community. God provided perfect timing. We could see our brother every day easily because they had a room at the center for $80 a night plus free food for as long as we stayed-in a great dining area. We didn’t need a car as our nephew and wife had a flight out of Albuquerque two hours ahead of ours and they took us back to the airport. God had provided again and saved us a lot of money.


NO-it is 9:30 at night, dark, and you cannot drive your car home from the airport. The left rear tire is flat. The filling station's kind attendants outside the airport couldn’t help us; the tire wouldn’t inflate. God provided a mechanic who was filling his car with gas who saw our situation. He came over, found the hidden jack and found the tool to drop the spare tire out from under the car (it had been there for 64,000 miles). He got under the car and kicked the stuck flat tire off and put the spare on. We were able to drive home and drop into our own bed. 


Prayer: Thank you precious Lord, who is able to do more than we can imagine and for protecting us on the Trip of Troubles. Thank you for providing a noisy busy room so I could talk to our brother about Jesus. He said,” I will accept him right now.” Thank you for stopping Satan from ruining our visit. We felt your presence all the way and never gave up because of your help. Amen.


Sandra Hilsabeck