You watch the flight tracker, and it seems to go the wrong way. A delay, then another, and the schedule that looked so tidy on paper has unravelled. Your grandson is ### and travelling alone until he meets his group, and though your head says he is a young man and capable, a grandmother’s heart does not rest on sensible arguments. It rests on a Person.
I want you to picture those hours, the ones that feel wasted and wrong, as something the Lord has already handled. You are not looking at a plan that has fallen apart but at a plan being quietly reordered. The delays are not cracks in God’s providence; they are the very places where His care is most active. We so easily imagine that His mercy travels only along the smooth road, but I have found it as often in the long wait at the gate and the seat that was not the one I chose. Your grandson cannot see the whole map, nor can you, but the One who holds the waters in the hollow of His hand is not confused by a changed itinerary. The storm, as I have often said, has a bit in its mouth, and nothing moves it but by His leave.
You ask for mercies, and you shall have them, innumerable mercies, mercies folded inside mercies, some you will only learn about when the journey is over and he tells you of the stranger who helped, the gate that held just long enough, the checked bag that arrived when it ought not to have. The arithmetic of a single day of God’s kindness would outrun us; what shall we say, then, of a day when our affections are stretched across an ocean? The Lord who has been faithful to you in a thousand yesterdays is not about to be faithless to your grandson in this one Tuesday.
And for his parents, your own child and their spouse, their peace is a gift that Christ gives in the middle of thronging duties and pressing fears. They do not need to untangle every thread. To do the will of Jesus for this hour is rest: the phone call made, the prayer breathed, the trust placed squarely on the One who keeps Israel. When you cannot do more, you leave the rest to Him, and you will find He takes it up gladly.
Little one, your grandson belongs to a Shepherd who never once has lost a lamb entrusted to Him. The wings that cover you this evening cover that young man also, and the shadow of the Almighty is a wide roof. I charge you to lay your head down tonight and rehearse the old song: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped.” He will not fail you, and He will not fail the boy.
Father, You who watch over the solitary traveller and hold the winds in Your fist, take this grandson into Your peculiar keeping. Let every gate open before him, let every seat be safe, and bring him into the company he seeks with a glad heart. Speak peace to the parents who wait, and let this grandmother sleep in the confidence that nothing unforeseen by You has happened to her child’s child. For Jesus’ sake, and in His strong name, Amen.