Blown Across the Highway

Thursday evening, I was driving home along I-70 from a meeting in Columbia and could see imposing clouds gathering ahead of me. Checking the radar while stopped for gas, I realized that a massive cold front with a squall line and heavy rain stood between me and home. It was inevitable that I would run into the front, and I hoped only get as many miles behind me as possible beforehand.

I drove alertly, with both hands on the wheel at 10:00 and 2:00, as I drew closer to the dark clouds ahead.  Suddenly, my car was blown across both lanes of the highway. I will never know how I missed the truck I had been passing, or how I didn’t blow off the road. It was like hydroplaning, but sideways and without water. My steering wheel didn’t budge, I was simply picked up and blown across the road.  In those harrowing moments, I realized one of the ways my darling little fuel-efficient, plug-in hybrid keeps its mpg so low (70.6 mpg for the first 5000 miles).  It is a light car. Even when I was fully prepared for the blast that was coming, my car was too light to withstand the wind. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I still love my little car, but it’s not the vehicle for storms on a highway.  

This morning, I was at Hopefest, a day of fun/music/food/social services provided by five Blue Springs churches for families that live year-round in the motels along I-70. I’ve been in those rooms more than once before, delivering food or other necessities to families in need.  The rooms look just like any motel room anywhere else: 2 beds and a television on a dresser, with a bathroom at the back.  Perhaps a microwave oven.  Families with children live there. Let me repeat. Families with children live year-round in a motel room.  School buses come by to pick up kids for school each morning. After school, they return to a motel room, a pool that is shuttered for the winter, and some weedy fields to play in by the side of the highway. There is no privacy, and beds are shared. Food is whatever the parents can afford that can be cooked in a microwave. There is no ability to make the food budget go farther with scratch cooking, nor can one make healthy food choices that would involve a cooktop or regular oven. Don’t get me wrong- families that are fleeing bad situations are thankful for a place to stay. However, a motel room is no place to raise a family over the long term.

As I’ve stood in various overcrowded motel rooms with my too-few gifts, I’ve heard stories of leaving in the middle of the night to escape physical violence.  Some people need to get away from an environment that threatens them or their children with drugs or gangs. Others have lost jobs. In general, the folks are doing the best that they can, but they have few options.  The rest of us have the privilege of taking for granted that we live in a safe place, are in relationships with caring and gentle people, and have family and friends that would take us in if we knocked at the door.  

For folks that have none of those things, there is no safety and no safety net. Even when they try as best as they can, sometimes they end up blown across the road by circumstances. Today, for awhile, those families that have gotten blown across to our piece of the highway were able to enjoy a lovely fall day with people who care.

No More Prophets?

Today marks the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s prophetic “I Have a Dream" speech.  Long lauded as one of the most powerful and eloquent speeches in history, King’s words gave voice to a movement that changed our history.  All of us live in a better nation because of the words of this man speaking on behalf of some of us. 

It is easy to sentimentalize that speech in that moment in history. However, the reality is that there were many Americans for whom King’s dream was decidedly not their own dream. Segregated society served them well, they believed.  Well-educated citizens (even church people!) believed that King’s vision would not be a dream, but a nightmare.  King served as a prophet by speaking hard truth to people who did not want to hear it, and he paid for it with his life.

My morning Scripture reading today included Zechariah 13.  The prophet promises that “in that day” (meaning “the day when God’s kingdom shall be fulfilled among us”), there will be no more false idols.  Interestingly, he announces also that there will be no more prophets in that day.  Zechariah doesn’t say that there will be no more false prophets, he says that there will be no more prophets of any stripe. In fact, in that day prophets are to change professions and become farmers. 

I puzzled over those words for awhile. Why no more prophets?  And then it struck me.  There will be no more need for prophets to announce the will of God, because, in that day, we will all see and understand and live in God’s will fully.  How will we know the Kingdom has arrived? When we no longer need someone else to explain it to us.

Dr. King served as a prophet to our nation, announcing a better way.  Sometimes people wonder about the need for continued focus on civil rights in our nation, citing how far we have come. Do we really need to keep talking about these same things again and again? Aren’t we good enough yet? I am convinced the day will come, as Zechariah promised, that we will no longer need prophets. Until that day arrives, though, may we continue to be attentive to the words of the prophets among us, as they continue to call us to a better way, a way to make our world today look a bit more like God’s kingdom.

Time Keeps on Slippin'

Time is a funny thing. It can be measured in so many different ways, by so many different yardsticks.

Three years ago this week, we moved into our Blue Springs home.  (We commuted a few weeks while waiting for our house to sell.) However, I’m now in my 4^th year of ministry in Blue Springs, which means that I’m busily planning my 4^th Christmas Eve here. So it either feels like 3 years in terms of house or 4 years in terms of ministry.  Either way, life before Blue Springs seems long, long ago.

A year ago, my father was coming to the end of his life on earth.  I am surprised at how much I am feeling this anniversary, and how much I am reliving last year’s events.  Each day has a mental marker for me- the day Dad went into the hospital but we thought he’d get better; the day we found out he wouldn’t recover; the last day he was alert; the last day. I am surprised at how immediate these feelings are, even a year later.

Two weeks ago, we got back from vacation.  Lazy days on the beach seem like a distant memory. My usual routine has settled itself back around me like a familiar bathrobe, and it’s hard to remember what it was like to have days structured only by the tide charts.  I realize anew how blessed I am to have days that are full of meaningful work and play. 

I'm not thinking just about how I measure the past. The future seems closer, too.  The September events are planned and underway. Ginger Avengers are busily recruiting for October’s JDRF walk.  Christmas Eve is largely planned, and I’ve even been working on my Christmas Eve sermon.  (After all, I’m pretty sure I know the story line for that evening’s Scripture.) 

Time moves at an entirely different pace for a young child starting school.  The fifteen minutes of homework feels like an eternity, and the weekend seems forever away.  Completing this grade level and advancing to the next grade is unimaginable. 

This week in worship, I spoke about Ecclesiastes, the familiar place which says, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.”  Time itself is the locus of God’s work among us.  No matter at what speed our clocks move or what season of life that we find ourselves, God is present and bringing about purpose and meaning.