No time to think.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed a burly moose lumbering down the hillside next to the Glenn Highway. Anyone who has field dressed a cow would have calculated her to be about 700 pounds on the hoof. She planned to sprint across the Glenn Highway, barring any obstacles in her path — like a car…

I jerked the steering wheel hard left into the oncoming traffic lane — avoiding her — and swerved back into my lane again. The dodge was successful, and I could hear my wife’s heart pounding — or maybe it was mine.

Too many times on Alaska roads I’ve passed a wrecked vehicle with a moose steaming on its hood. The memory of the carnage usually reminds me to be ready for wildlife encounters.

But broadsiding a moose was the last thing I was thinking about after a picnic at King Mountain.

Had the ungulate trotted down the hill a few hoof beats faster, our Toyota would have smacked the cow’s chest. Had I been driving 40 rather than 45 mph the impact might have slung the rangy cow over our hood and into the windshield. I could be writing this from a hospital bed.

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I cannot untangle the skeins of God’s sovereignty. But as I grow older, I find peace in knowing that God’s script in which I play a role, includes myriad other people linked to me. For instance, God’s decision to allow heartache in my life may touch the destiny of a grandchild. The way I handle temptation may impact the eternal future of someone I barely know. What I casually write online may alter a decision that affects the eternity of a friend on Facebook.

All this is happening in God’s unseen realm according to his plan. I can trust his omniscience (All-knowing-ness) in every incomprehensible decision he makes about me — for the eternal good of others.

In the past few months two people close to our family have died, and we’re still adjusting to the loss. God interrupted their plans (and ours) as part of HIS plan. Had I broadsided the moose, God’s interruption of my plans may have been a part of HIS plan to secure the salvation of someone somewhere.

I am not comfortable with everything God chooses to do, but I pursue his promised peace, refusing to grow bitter over his undisclosed reasons. My life-thread may be inexplicably weaving through someone’s life two thousand miles away — and only God knows how it happens.  

In his split-second sovereignty I might have gone to heaven while someone else, in a split-second, may choose to follow Christ — because of the story of an impatient moose.

II Cor 1:6

 If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation…

II Tim. 2:10

Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.

II Cor. 4:12

So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.