He Showed Me Mercy!

I traveled out of town down to my home-town. It was a trip long overdue. I had a nice time visiting places I have not been to for years. I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent there. However, when the time I scheduled for staying there was over, I was in a big haste to get back to the city.

For one, I missed my family; also I missed the opportunity of browsing and doing my usual stuff online. In my haste to get back as fast as possible. I changed my plan of traveling. Instead of boarding a vehicle in the early hours of the day, I opted out for an earlier trip via night bus! The dreaded night bus! The queen wasn’t in support of the silly idea, but I cunningly cut her off and went ahead with my foolish decision.

All went well at first. The bus started the journey which is over 800km at 6.00p.m. I was happy about the early start. However, around 8p.m, we started having problems. Then it dawned on me that I had made a very stupid decision. The driver stopped on the side of the road and refused to continue the journey because a passenger made a call using his cellphone. Of course before departure, we all were told to switch off our cellphone. The driver insisted that he cannot continue the journey because he doesn’t know who the passenger was calling on the cellphone. After much pleading, he continued.

At that point, I started imagining the hazards lying ahead. Fellow passengers started recounting the terrible incidents of armed robbery attacks that have occurred on this same road in the recent times. Beside this, while travelling down, I had noticed that the road was full of deadly potholes and there were several motor accidents. In my haste to get back to my place of residence, I had ignore all these danger signs.

Some hours later, we had a flat tire and we had to change the tire in the middle of nowhere. While the tire was being changed, a lot of scary thoughts were running through my mind. I knew I had made a very stupid mistake, and I was begging God to grant me safe journey down home base on His mercy alone.

After that, we got to a spot where all vehicles ahead of us had stopped and switched off. Reason, they are afraid of continuing the journey because of the possibility of getting robbed. So we were stuck in the middle of nowhere! Up till now, I can’t explain how we got out of that one. I just woke up (I had to force myself to sleep since we were categorically told that the vehicles ahead of us won’t move until 4a.m in the morning) and discovered that we were moving.

So many other things happened. For example, when the journey was almost completed, we got to another dead-end around 9a.m. Rioters had blocked the expressway and they refused to move. They were protesting against the Nigerian Policemen who had mounted checkpoints along that expressway. After spending about an hour and the confusion was not subsiding, our bus driver decided to use a track-road to bypass the angry rioters.

I eventually got home around 2p.m. I was grateful to be alive and whole! Did I say, grateful, surely that was a slip of tongue, I meant VERY GRATEFUL to God for sparing my life!