A WORD FOR TODAY, August 23, 2022
Peggy Hoppes
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Blessings. Peg
A WORD FOR TODAY, August 23, 2022
“I will lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from Yahweh, who made heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. Yahweh is your keeper. Yahweh is your shade on your right hand. The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. Yahweh will keep you from all evil. He will keep your soul. Yahweh will keep your going out and your coming in, from this time forward, and forever more.” Psalm 121, WEB
I like to take road trips. I’d rather drive than take an airplane. I’m not afraid to fly, though I find it terribly uncomfortable. Recently, the flights have been unreliable. We were lucky when we came home from Europe that all our flights worked out, but I’ve heard stories from many others who have been stuck overnight in airports because their flights were canceled. More than a few have been without clean clothes or even toiletries because they aren’t prepared for the extreme layovers.
I also like road trips because of the opportunity to see America and to experience different places along the way. Yes, it takes more time, and it can be more expensive. A road trip means hotel stops, more meals, and these days the price of gas. I have a great car that gets incredible gas mileage, so even with the extra costs a road trip does not really cost much more than a plane ticket, except in time.
Road trips are like adventures. I’ve seen some of the most interesting things when I’ve traveled by car. I took a detour on my way home from the east coast and spend several days Chattanooga, Tennessee. I’ve stopped in a swamp to search for alligators and in a national park to see petrified trees. On those road trips There’s a town in Illinois where they’ve built a bunch of extra-large things. There is a rocking chair that is at least two stories high, and dozens of other unusually large sculptures to see.
I have visited the Cadillac Ranch, a strange art installation of a bunch of old Cadillacs buried headfirst in the Texas landscape which visitors can add their own touch with spray paint. I knew I was going to be nearby, so I carried my own cans to leave my mark. I’ve stopped at more tourist traps than I can count, enjoying the gift shops filled with souvenirs that I never need but always buy. I have eaten local cuisine and seen things that I’d never know existed if I flew overhead.
There’s a website and a book that shares ideas of all the things you can see on “Roadside America.” We are a kitschy people, with strange ideas of entertainment. But it is all in fun. Sometimes you don’t even have to go on a road trip to see them. The World’s Largest Cowboy Boots stand in front of a mall just a few miles from my house. There’s a saloon and a museum on the Riverwalk that has a chandelier made of four thousand antlers. There’s a museum of the weird and a cathedral of junk in Austin. Every city has fun things like these to do for the tourist, but we should always remember to stop and enjoy the wackiness wherever we are.
We had a wonderful time on our trip to Germany, but one of my complaints was that we were constantly on the move. We traveled with a group, and we had a schedule to maintain. We had to leave places so quickly that we didn’t have time to really see them. Our tour manager would often say, “Let’s meet back here in forty-five minutes. Here’s what you can see, the restroom is over there, and this is your opportunity to eat lunch.” I spent about fifteen minutes in one church that demanded hours to see everything, and I still didn’t have time to get anything for lunch. The worst part was not having time in any of the churches to really linger and experience the presence of God.
We are always in a rush. We fly from place to place because we want to spend more time at our destination, but sometimes the real joy is found in the journey. The musical group Alabama once had a song with this refrain, “I’m in a hurry to get things done. Oh I rush and rush until life’s no fun. All I really gotta do is live and die. But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.” There are good reasons to fly sometimes. Sometimes we need to fly to get to our destination quickly because it is an emergency, or we have a schedule to keep. The scripture for today reminds us that whatever the reason for our journey, let us always look to God and find ways to linger in His presence. Enjoy everything along the way, even the wackiness of roadside attractions, because He is with us wherever we go.
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