Twelve Minutes on Highway 9

For eleven years, Marco Salinas drove his three children to Westfield Elementary in a dented silver Corolla that smelled like coffee and pine air freshener. The drive took twelve minutes — fourteen if they caught the light at Birch and Main.

He never once turned on the radio.

Instead, Marco talked. At the stop sign by the fire station, he would ask what they were worried about that day. By the time they passed the Presbyterian church on Elm Street, he had connected their answer to something God had said or done. When his youngest, Lucia, told him she was afraid of her spelling test, he said, "Lucia, the God who taught Moses what to say to Pharaoh can help you remember how to spell 'necessary.'" At the railroad crossing, he always paused — not just for safety, but to name one thing he was grateful for.

Lucia is thirty-four now. She drives a different car on a different road in a different city. But every time she reaches a stop sign, she still asks herself what she is carrying that day. Every railroad crossing, she whispers a thank-you.

Moses told Israel to talk about God's commands "when you walk along the road" — and he meant it literally. Faith was never designed to live only in sanctuaries and Sunday school rooms. It was made for stop signs and steering wheels, for the ordinary twelve minutes between here and there. Marco Salinas never pastored a church. But in that Corolla, he pastored three souls — one commute at a time.