Highway Chaplain: The Same Road Is Many Roads

Truck drivers over their careers will drive over many different roads and yet many times travel the same roads. There will be interstate highways with limited access that for the most part speeds are steady and higher than surface streets. These highways carry the same number for their entire distance some reaching from one coast to the other and some just a few miles long. Yet these roads are the same in many ways.

It is interesting to me how an Interstate highway though it has the same number its entire length will have various consistencies from state to state. Just look at I-40 for instance. It begins its western journey in Eastern North Carolina and ends at Barstow, California – a couple of hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean.

Along its journey it travels through the low lying piedmont area of North Carolina and slowly rises into the mountains on the western side. The various grades range from 0% to 6% through the western part of the state. It enters Tennessee and begins a rolling ascent into the Cumberland Plateau and then descending to the mighty Mississippi crossing into Arkansas.

It lumbers along through Arkansas into Oklahoma then Texas crossing into New Mexico, Arizona, then into California. All along its path you travel through low lying plains where rice is grown to mountains where the winter snows can stop you from climbing to the top without chains attached to your wheels.

There are places along I-40 that run smooth and easy, while other stretches you feel like you are driving on an old washboard. Shaking and shimming so much when you finally get back onto a smooth stretch your eyes are finally able to fully focus.

There are times the road is made of concrete and other times its asphalt. The road will get rutted from the trucks, and if you catch a steer tire wrong it will just about jerk the wheel from your hands.

It is the same road but it is also many roads, because no matter how often you drive it it is always changing. The weather can be sunny and clear then 200 miles down the road you hit storms and rain or snow and ice and everything changes in an instant.

Life is much the same way as a road we are on journeying through this world. Like I-40, it has its beginning and it has its end. No matter how long your journey, it is the same road – but it also is many.

As I have traveled this road of life, I have seen the smooth times and the rough. I have traveled this road lost in the dark and I have traveled it in the bright light. I have been jammed up in traffic and other times I have just cruised along.

There have been detours and roadside inspections, accidents and failures; but it was in November of last year that I passed a place I had been before that is the inspiration for this month’s article.

In May of 1984, I stood beside the bed in room 214 of Scottish Rite Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia holding the hand of my youngest son Craig who had suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns from cooking grease. I wasn’t a Christian at the time, and with tears in my eyes without a prayer in my heart I could only hope God would spare his young life.

I have journeyed a ways since that time in May 1984. I broke down along life’s highway on August 27^th, 1991. Life had brought me as far as I could go on my own and it was then I found the real power that drives life. I put Christ in my heart and found a new source for my journey.

He not only gave me a new look, but also became my GPS to guide me. He became my permanent rest stop too. It was also through Him I found myself in a place I had been before.

Fast forward 27 & 1/2 years later. I once again entered room 214 at Scottish Rite Hospital (the very same room from 1984) to hold the hand of my youngest grandson who was going into surgery to insert pins in his broken arm. The difference this time was I am a Christian, and with a tear in my eye I had a prayer in my heart to give to him to calm his fears of what lay ahead.

Many times in life after we place the Lord first in our life, He will give us opportunities for a do-over. On November 27^th, 2011 I had just that opportunity only this time I had hope, faith and a prayer for all would be well.

So Until Next Time…. Godspeed and Good Running,

The Highway Chaplain

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