Monday, March 01, 2010

Driving the Psalms


Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Psalm 119:105

A couple weeks ago, I went down to visit my sister in Tennessee. I enjoyed beautiful weather and great hiking and good company of college kids. I had a really great time.

Driving home, I hit a little snag called a snow storm. What a rude awakening from the lovely weekend. It felt like life was saying, "Welcome back to reality".

The snowstorm made for terrible driving conditions. terrible. Some of the worst roads I'd seen in my whole life. I clutched the steering wheel, white-knuckled for most of the way home, barely able to see ten feet in front of me. Waiting for a plow or a sand truck, but not finding one. Being passed by people not smart enough to know the danger(or with better tires than mine).

Fresh in my mind was something the director of a play we saw while in Tennessee had said: "I see life as us waking up in a dark room, and in the distance, there's a door and there's light pouring out from the door, and a hand reaching for us. The hand is God, and when we choose to grab on to it, the rest of our life is us moving closer to that light."

That was a paraphrase, but I liked what he said. So, as I drove, I thought about God being light and how badly I needed light at that time. How those headlights, even on high beams, were barely enough to get me through. But the light was there, leading me on. Behind me, darkness and slick furrowed roads. Ahead, light, and the hope of Iowa, where they actually know how to treat/plow the highways.

Just like walking in life. I press forward with the Light ahead of me, surrounded by darkness on a treacherous path. Without the Light, surely I would lose my way. Surely I would die in a ditch, unnoticed by the rest of the world. Behind me, darkness. Ahead, the hope of Glory. The light of day. Clinging to that hand of God tighter every time I stumble. Closer to the light each time.

2 comments:

Scarlet-O said...

Timely post :-)

Last week it was raining here, something it's been doing a lot lately, which everyone told me it never does in this town, where nobody how to drive in the rain, and my driver-side wiper got stuck, and I couldn't see ANYTHING... and I pressed on, too... though everyone would have said it was wiser to pull over and wait til it stopped... because it was late, and there was no place open to pull over and get it fixed...

Why did you press through? Why not wait for the clouds to break?

ks said...

I decided to keep going because I knew I could get home before midnight and it wasn't worth stopping anywhere. Snow storms don't always go away fast, and I knew it was just getting worse in the north, so I wanted to get ahead of the bad part. Besides I'd been gone several days and wanted to see my kiddos and husband.