On Sunday afternoon, Nov. 1, 1998, I planned to attend a recital in which two of my former piano students were participating. They were going to play a duet together, so it would be a special treat for me. I had told the families I would meet them at the recital hall and sit with them.

As I left my home and neared the main highway, a car pulled out directly in front of me from an adjacent shopping plaza. The driver never looked in my direction or slowed down. If I hadn't reacted quickly, I would have collided with him. He settled down in front of me to a slow 30 mile-per-hour crawl in a 45 mph zone. The traffic began piling up behind me, but this area of the road is a no-passing zone and there was no way to get safely around him.

Several miles ahead he pulled off and I hurried along, trying to make up for lost time. Then I remembered that I was low on gas, so I stopped at my usual service station. Instead of filling the tank as I normally do, I pumped only $10 worth and ran inside to pay. At the counter, I had to wait again while an old lady painstakingly counted out wrinkled singles and slid them across to the clerk.

I had meant to clean the windshield because there was an annoying blot right in front of eyes. But I left the pump in such a hurry that I forgot. The smudge finally bothered me sufficiently that I pulled over and wiped that particular spot on the windshield. I even stopped again to clean up the mess I made the first time.

Hurrying, I reached a major intersection three-quarters of the way to my destination. As I slowed down for the stop sign, I noticed another van coming into the intersection from the left. I immediately recognized it as belonging to one the families I was planning to meet. She stopped at the intersection about three seconds before I did, waited for me to stop, then made a left turn and preceded me up the hill. She had not recognized me, but before long the children in the back seat started to wave. Meeting them simplified my trip since I did not know where the recital hall was located. I merely followed them to our destination.

A number of events conspired to create perfect timing that day: the slow driver, the $10 worth of gas rather than a full tank (which was offset by the old lady with her $1 bills), the smear on the windshield which I had to get out twice to clean. All of these time adjustments got me to that stop sign within three seconds of the other car. Pretty fine tuning! It makes me realize not only how precise God can be but that interruptions in our schedule might well be blessings in disguise.