Three Wooden Crosses

A farmer and a teacher, a hooker and a preacher
Ridin’ on a midnight bus bound for Mexico
One’s headed for vacation, one for higher education
And two of them were searchin’ for lost souls
That driver never ever saw the stop sign
And eighteen wheelers can’t stop on a dime

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway
Why there’s not four of them, Heaven only knows
I guess it’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you
It’s what you leave behind you when you go

That farmer left a harvest, a home and eighty acres
The faith and love for growin’ things in his young son’s heart
And that teacher left her wisdom in the minds of lots of children
Did her best to give ’em all a better start
And that preacher whispered, “Can’t you see the Promised Land?”
As he laid his blood-stained bible in that hooker’s hand

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway
Why there’s not four of them, Heaven only knows
I guess it’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you
It’s what you leave behind you when you go

That’s the story that our preacher told last Sunday
As he held that blood-stained bible up
For all of us to see
He said “Bless the farmer, and the teacher, and the preacher
Who gave this Bible to my mama
Who read it to me”

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway
Why there’s not four of them, now I guess we know
It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you
It’s what you leave behind you when you go

There are three wooden crosses on the right side of the highway
— Randy Travis (2002) [Written By: Doug Johnson and Kim Williams]

The song, penned by Doug Johnson and Kim Williams, and performed by Randy Travis on his 2002 album Rise and Shine, achieved remarkable success. It became Randy Travis’s 16th and final number-one country single. Notably, it made music history as the first release from a Christian record label (Word Records) to reach the top of the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. In 2003, the Country Music Association (CMA) honored it with the Song of the Year award, and it also won a Dove Award in 2004, recognizing it as Country Song of the Year by the Gospel Music Association.

Reflecting on the song’s significance, Travis shared his personal connection to it with Christian Music Today that the song was symbolic of his own Christian conversion. “I came from a background that was heavy with drugs and alcohol and arrests,” Travis said. “I’ve heard people speak about how a vision or something hit them, like a light turned on, right then and there. For me, I was into my early twenties, and I went to bed one night and just started reading the Bible. That’s how the slow process of coming to understand that I needed to know more about the Word of God began, and then coming to the point of accepting Christ and water baptism.”