Three Wooden Crosses

Three Wooden Crosses is a country song by Randy Travis. It is one of his most popular, and is often sung by gospel artists. The title is a reference to crosses which are often placed at the scene of fatal highway accidents, in memory of the deceased.

The song talks about a fatal bus-truck accident. Beside the bus driver (who survived, presumably along with whoever was in the truck), the bus (heading for Mexico) was carrying four passengers: a farmer "on vacation", a teacher "seeking higher education", and a hooker and a preacher "both of whom were searching for lost souls".

As the song implies, three of the four passengers perished: the second verse mentions the farmer and the teacher (each of whom left behind a legacy) were among the deceased, while the preacher asks the hooker "can't you see the Promised Land?" as he places a blood-stained Bible in her hands.

The narrator says that he heard the story while in church the previous Sunday, and the preacher produced the Bible as proof. But the preacher telling the story was not the passenger on the bus, he was the son of the hooker who took the Bible from the (dying) preacher and read it to him (presumably leaving her profession behind).