IT’S becoming a tradition: the first day of every concert tour is usually a dramatic one.

Today’s was spectacular.

Last summer, we had sudden electrical problems the night we were leaving. This winter, the sound and lighting equipment trailer detached from the tour bus. We found out the next day–in another city. And yesterday, two hours from home, we discovered that the bus’s water heater was kaput.

I should have expected it. In fact I did. But I was still ticked off. Grumbling, I turned the bus around, and headed to the repair shop, an hour away. We parked at a truck stop up the road.

This morning, after a short sleep, I awoke to the alarm clock… and a clear voice speaking in my heart:

You are here for a purpose.

I don’t know how I knew, but I knew I was hearing my guardian angel.

“You are to give your first CD (Deliver Me From Me) to [the owner of the shop].”

These words came out of nowhere–but struck me like lightning. I had found about about two months ago that this owner had been diagnosed with liver cancer. It was burning on my heart to give him my first CD–a collection of songs about coming back to the Lord, returning, like “the prodigal.” But I never got it to him. Now, there was no mistaking the opportunity.

You’re heater will be fine. All is taken care of.

I got behind the wheel of the bus so fast, that it took several miles down the highway before my eyes cleared from morning grog!

I pulled into the shop; the foreman was standing outside enjoying a coffee and the morning sun. Within a minute–on the first try–the heater started working again.

Before I left, I opened a copy of my first CD, and wrote a message to the owner, who is fighting for his life at home. As I drove away, I prayed, “If he doesn’t know you Lord, I pray, please, use this CD to bring him home.”

The heater hasn’t quit since.

As I was winding down this evening, I read the second reading for July 10th from “My Daily Catholic Bible.” The following verse jumped out at me:

God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work (2 Cor 9:8).

It is the same scripture I was given nearly a year ago, the day before a little woman in Florida came up to me after a concert, with a cheque to cover several thousand dollars in engine repairs we had incurred.

EPILOGUE

When they saw Jesus speaking with authority in the synagogues, they said, “Isn’t this the carpenter from Nazareth?” And they refused to accept Him. How often have I refused to accept God, hidden in the every day disguise of hardship?

Tonight, I go to bed seeing what was beneath that cloak of tribulation. And I am humbled by the first miracle of this concert tour.

But I am enjoying a hot shower.