What could be placed on the scales to overcome the possible damage to our car, my safety, and my dear wife's safety?
I did have a few counters to start with:
Modern weather forecasting is very accurate, and Sandy was following the predictions closely.
Cell phone technology allowed me to access these forecasts as we traveled.
My time in the Navy gave me a good understanding of how hurricanes work over water, especially the dangerous and less dangerous halves of the hurricane. (NY City was in the dangerous half!)
My car is faster than a hurricane, I could turn and run!
So I had a plan: I would race the storm to get far enough inland and through the dangerous semi-circle to get to the less dangerous semi-circle, based on the predicted track, and hunker down with our generous hosts.
But why risk it at all? Why not stay in Maine where there was little danger and good fellowship?
The answer - A Missions Revival, call it a missions conference, if you will. But still you may say "Certainly the love offering was not worth the risk!" That would be true, I would never risk my wife's safety, and possibly life, for mere money. There is something more important at work here. The will of the Lord!
God made a divine appointment for Joan and me when Pastor Martin invited us. We claim to follow God's will in our ministry. Should I not trust God to give us the resources to do His will? He had already given us many resources. Some are listed above, others are more mundane. The car, our driving record, the Interstate Highway system, hotels all along the way in case of emergency, a robust emergency services system.
The most important resource however, is trust in Him. We have faith He is worthy of our trust. If God assigns us a task, He will provide the means to accomplish that task. We have but to trust and do. If we cannot trust the Lord to get us 600 miles through some of the easiest and safest roads on earth, how can we trust Him for thousands of miles in a dozen countries?
The overall story of our trip is not very exciting. Maine to Massachusetts was light rain and little wind, Connecticut to NY was a little windy and little or no rain. Pennsylvania to Virginia was interesting, quite windy and moderate rain. But it was never worse than a good summer rainstorm. The whole way we saw evidence of only three accidents; a spin out in West Hartford, CT that was a "normal" rush hour event; a car with a badly damaged front end and no sign of what was hit, likely a deer; and a tractor trailer under tow that appeared to have jackknifed. Not an unusual accident count for a 600 mile trip through some of the busier roads in the US.
Other than crossing the Susquehanna River, where the winds were strong and the construction narrowed the lanes, I never felt in any real danger. I drove from Scranton, PA to Winchester, VA at 50-60 MPH because of the rain, but that was overly cautious to be honest.
After we arrived and had eaten a sumptuous dinner we retired with our hosts to watch The Weather Channel. Sandy had merged with the winter front to become a "Post-Tropical Storm". TWC and the sensationalist media insist on calling her a "Superstorm". The storm rapidly dissipated and the prediction models collapsed. There was no history for the computer programmers to model on. Sandy was truly a "storm of the century", actually two centuries. But Joan and I were safe in a stout house in Winchester, VA where the Lord wanted us!
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