"Daddy, We Should Pray"

This past week I attended a week-long intensive class at Liberty University. Three years ago when I went down for a class the dormitories were open for visiting online students. This time, however, I had to go the hotel route. Since I needed a hotel anyway Marci and I thought it wise to make it a family trip where I would attend class all week and Marci and the kids would use the pool at the hotel, relax and otherwise peruse Lynchburg all day until I was finished in the evenings.

When we arrived at our hotel on Sunday evening at 11:30pm we had trouble finding the hotel. The GPS said we had reached our destination but all we could see was what our headlights illuminated- everything else was dark. Then I said to Marci, “Is that a building down there?” We took the entranceway down to our right and sure enough there was our hotel. The reason we could not see the hotel initially was because they were without power- along with 70% of the rest of Lynchburg we came to discover. Apparently recent storms had cause widespread outages.

We spoke to the attendant at the hotel who was sitting outside in the dark who informed us that they could not take any reservations even though we already had one; we were on our own. So at the top of the exit-way on what seemed like an abandoned road we stopped and talked about what to do. Marci scanned the GPS for nearby hotels within 10-20 miles and started calling. Every hotel that had power was completely booked. Turns out Lynchburg residents were taking up residence in local hotels until their power came back on. And I don’t blame them; no power is bad enough but no power with a heat index of 105˚ is a different story.

Perplexed by our unexpected turn of events and beginning to contemplate throwing in the towel and driving back home (7hrs mind you) my 6 year old son Mason peeps up to say, “Daddy, we should pray”. Thinking that was a brilliant idea I said, “You are right Mason; we should pray”, and we did.

One of the last hotels Marci called after we prayed was kind enough to inform us that the Thomas Road Baptist Church (Liberty University’s College Church) was providing a relief effort to any in need due to the power outages. So with no other options we headed on over to Thomas Road. When we arrived it became obvious that this congregation was doing a great deal to serve their community in a time of need. They warmly welcomed us at midnight, provided us drinks and food if we wanted to eat and then escorted the 5 of us to their gymnasium which was packed with families. They gave us blankets and mats and we fell asleep around 2:30am in a cool gymnasium with about 200 other people.

I got an early shower (about 5am) and a time to pray and ponder what the week might look like given our situation. We all walked to the church cafeteria at 7:30am where they served us a nice breakfast. As we finished our prayer together at the breakfast table thanking God for His provision overnight, a kind lady from the church approached our table and said, “I know you don’t know me from Adam and you may think this is kind of weird, but we heard you were Liberty students and we have power at our house. We live about 5 minutes from here. We have 2 extra bedrooms and a pool and you all are welcome to stay with us this week.” Wow. Wow was I thankful for this angelic messenger! I was most thankful because as I sat in the gymnasium the night before I could not help but say to myself over and over again, “How can I go to class tomorrow for 8 hours in an air conditioned room while my wife and children roam Lynchburg with no place to call home base? I can’t leave them to hang out in a gymnasium all day long when they don’t even know anyone.”

But now, by the grace of God through a Christ-like servant my concerns were relieved. We had a home, a pool, home-cooked meals and genuine spiritual conversation the rest of the week.

Praise God for His timely care for His children. Praise God that He gives us exactly what we need exactly when we need it. And praise God for my little boy Mason who knows an important part of what it means to build life around Jesus; “Daddy, we should pray”.