Miles and Miles of Roads

The hum of the tires on asphalt and the West Texas wind create a continual white noise that can only be drowned out by the air conditioner turned on high or the sound of my favorite music playing through the speakers. The terrain that flashes past the window changes from concrete jungles to cultivated fields to the most majestic of God's creation. Beautiful mountains, prairies, and every evening the yellow, then red, then purple sunsets that go from shining straight into my eyes making it hard to see and drive, to the relief the horizon brings when the sun is blocked from view leaving only it's multicolor painting of sky and clouds. Actually, only God could paint it exactly this beautiful. One day here, then a few days in the next place, then it's on to the next and the next. The hours of travel give us time to think. Thinking about our children and grandchildren. Are they okay? What are they doing at this moment? Working? Playing? Feeding babies? Sitting and reading a book to them? What about our parents who are quickly aging and seem so far away as the steel belts continue their hum. Brothers and sisters come to mind as well, and though technology makes it easy to talk to them as I drive, they are busy as well and visits seem too few and far between.

As the clouds gather for a front coming in, the rain will be welcome but the uncertainty of lightning and wind can make one cautious or even anxious. This trip to the panhandle is not nearly our longest but it's been over a week since we were home and after we return we stay for only a day and then we go to the other end of the state. The countryside there is covered with sage and scrub brush with a Yucca occasionally pointing up to the sky. Many a cowboy has ridden half a mile out of his way to retrieve an errant cow only to realize it's not moving and it's not a cow but a Joshua tree. Returning home from there, just a couple of days later we return to the windy, and by then colder panhandle. Back and forth, to and fro, up and down the highways and roads of this country. Every one of them opening up a new adventure. New faces and names to learn and remember. New people that sometimes become dear friends. The long trips are also time for us to talk. Talking about the things I've already mentioned that we quietly think and ponder about but also our dreams and visions of the future; what it holds, what our place will be in it. If we will come up against things we are not prepared for, things our loved ones are not prepared for. We have asked ourselves questions about what we are doing and can we do it better. We travel all over the country and in many capacities strive to do what Christ called us all to do but has called us specifically to and that is to make disciples. To many that sounds cliché and to others it means nothing, but to us it is of much more importance than I believe, unfortunately, it is to most people, even to most church goers. It is the one main thing Jesus commanded us to do just before he left for good, or at least until it's all over and He comes again.

So this week, like every other week for over twenty years now, we will be in another place, among another group of people, trying to portray Christlikeness and the importance of them doing the same everywhere they go themselves. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. There is nothing special about us but that's what we strive for. Each of us travels the roads of this country passing house after house, in town after town, or worse yet, we pass the same houses in our own town over and over again, not even knowing the people behind those walls. Each of those houses and each of those towns are full of people. People like you and me and as someone much wiser than me once said, a majority of them are at the end of their rope. Roads are arteries where hope, love, grace, and mercy can flow just like blood flows through the arteries and veins of the human body. Seems like everywhere we go there are roads under construction. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe that's progress. Maybe that's a challenge to turn down another road, a side road we may never have traveled if not otherwise coerced to. It's not a detour, it is a conscious choice to go a different way. A better way. A way that leads us to other places and other adventures...other people, other opportunities. God's word talks about a wide way and a narrow way. The wider is met by greater numbers of travelers while the narrow is rarely even found or seen at all by the passersby. It is the narrow way Christ tells us to travel. That tells me bigger is not always better and more doesn't mean success. Finding the narrow way and going that way even when it doesn't make sense to us..., that's what it is all about. It's all part of the "going". And the "going", whatever roads we take or how many miles it means, is not an end in itself but the means to the end. The reason we do the "going". To make disciples.