Rain and preaching

I left Little Rock Sunday morning early so that I could arrive in Newark, Arkansas in plenty of time to visit with pastor/friend Jody Smotherman. It rained on me the entire way there, and as I exited Highway 167, the words my dad said to me the night before bounced around my cranium, “Do you think you can get there?”

I had been aware of the massive flooding in north and northeast Arkansas over the past two weeks as a result of a stalled weather system that dumped 7-9 inches of rain on the area. As the system moved out of the area, to the north and east, it continued to fill rivers and creeks with damaging waters.

However, as I sat there, with my car idling on Highway 14 staring at the blocked road, my only thought was “uh-oh.” How was I going to get to church to preach on time?

Fortunately, I was able to drive down a parallel highway for a half mile or so and found a connecting gravel road that put me on the other side of the flood. After preaching, I returned home another way – through Batesville.

All of that brings me to a question… do you remember a place in scripture where someone had to “return another way?” Where was it? Why was it? And go further… What practical implications for our lives might there be in doing things differently than we’ve done them before?