Surprise Encounter

"Mimi, look!" our granddaughter Bethany motioned, "That car has a Pearl River license plate!"

"What?" I exclaimed, then I turned to look. Pearl River county, Mississippi, was where we had lived for 20 years just outside the town of Picayune.

I rushed over to the car that had been parked beside us at the Tennessee supermarket and had just backed out.  "Are you from Pearl River county?"  I asked the puzzled-looking driver. When he nodded in the affirmative, I asked if he was from Picayune.

"Carriere," he said. That was a small community down the road a bit from Picayune.

"Howard!" I called to my husband who was about to get in our car. "This man is from Pearl River county!" He was wide-eyed and lost no time in engaging the driver in conversation. Although the stranger didn't know any of our kids, his last name was well known from students they knew from school.

This reminded me of something that happened on a trip to see our daughter in Georgia several years ago. We were stuck in a traffic jam with travelers frustrated and some getting  out of cars, strolling down the highway to see the cause of the delay. Idly gazing out our car window, I spelled out the letters I could see on the license plate of a nearby car. P-E-A-R... I read, then "Pearl River!" I exclaimed, realizing the tag was from Pearl River County, Mississippi! Howard lost no time in visiting with the driver who had lived not far from the area where we raised our family.

We have moved so much, only recently from our home in Oklahoma to the mountains of Tennessee, that we have learned to appreciate the variety of God's creation. I like the scriptures in Acts17:24, 26, which say, "God made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is the Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. (26) And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."

No matter where we go, God knows where we are!