Three Wooden Crosses

The song describes four passengers on a midnight bus traveling from the United States to Mexico: a farmer on vacation, a teacher seeking higher education, a prostitute, and a preacher, both of whom were "searching for lost souls". The bus is involved in a fatal accident when the bus driver does not see a stop sign and the bus is hit by an 18-wheeler which kills three of the four passengers; the lyrics ask why there are only three crosses and not four. (There is no mention of what happened to the drivers of either vehicle.)

The song mentions that the farmer and teacher were killed in the wreck, with the farmer leaving a harvest and a son who would follow in his footsteps, and the teacher leaving wisdom with the children she taught. It also mentions that the preacher laid his bloodstained Bible in the hands of the prostitute, asking her if she could "see the Promised Land" prior to her own death.

The end of the song reveals that the story about the passengers was told to the narrator by a preacher during a Sunday church service. In a twist, however, it reveals that the preacher who told the story is not the preacher from the bus, but rather the son of the prostitute, holding up the bloodstained Bible as proof. This reveals that the prostitute was the passenger that survived the accident, who read the Bible that had been given to her by the dying preacher to her son, leading him to eventually become a preacher himself.

Deborah Evans Price, of Billboard magazine reviewed the song favorably, calling it a "beautifully written tale of faith and redemption." She goes on to say that Travis has never sounded better, "and his warm baritone perfectly conveys every nuance in the lyric."^[4]