Suffering part 2

Thirteen years ago, I met an interesting man, with an even more interesting story. He was a rabbi whose job it was to fly regularly from Israel to other countries, tracking down men who had abandoned their wives in Israel. If he could not convince them to return to their families, he would arrange for them to give a "get", a Jewish divorce,required by Biblical law, enabling their wives to remarry. On every trip, he would bring back ten to fifteen of these Bills of Divorce, enabling the unfortunate abandoned wife to begin anew. In 1996, he had completed a mission, and wanted to return to Israel as soon as possible. The problem was that it was the days before the mournful fast of tish'ah B'Av, when we avoid doing anything that smacks of danger. He consulted with the late Rabbi Pam, a noted scholar and dean of a Yeshivah in Brooklyn, New York. Should an international flight be taken on these ill-fated days? Rabbi Pam responded "those doing a mitzvah (a righteous deed) will come to no harm". He started out for the airport. The taxi got a flat tire! He thought "oh no! This is terrible!" To make matters worse, the taxi driver was completely incompetent. It should have taken ten minutes to change the tire. It took him an hour and a half! Needless to say, he missed the plane. That was TWA flight 800 that crashed into the sea twelve minutes after takeoff, with all aboard killed. He returned to Brooklyn, and entered Rabbi Pam's office. He found the rabbi crying. "Why are you crying, rabbi?" The rabbi looked up and saw him. "You're alive! I thought I had sent you to your death!" "But rabbi, you said that those doing a mitzvah will come to no harm. You were right!"
How often do we face disaster, but avoid it because of an "unfortunate mishap" which sent us to tears, but actually saved our lives? Unlike this story, we rarely can see what the alternative might have been. This is part of the story, but there is much more to come.