Highways

The highways aren’t my home.

Ribbons of eternal change, the asphalt gleams in the setting sun. Silver backs of a thousand steel-faced creatures toss the light back to the clouds as they rush onward in eternal variations of monotony.

A thousand soulless faces, peering from behind glass bulwarks.

Ten thousand lives; ten million stories all untold.

I’ve never been good with directions. Maps laugh at me with their bewildering variety of folds when I try to find their secrets. If I set off without a guide – if I dip my foot into this raging river with nothing to hold on to – I’ll be swept away. I could drive on and on and on, cruise control and a CD playing and only my oblivion to guide me, until horizons become strange and the stars look down to inquire.

Highways aren’t my home.

I can already look back and see the places where I’ve left a little of my heart; and I know there will be more. Places that hold laughter and tears and so many moments, images burned onto the pages of my thoughts like blooming flowers of remembrance.

Moments. So many of them, like the rays of sun that flicker on my window, soon extinguished in the rush of my exhaust. The highway stretches on ahead, and the moments lie in unmarked abundance. And I want to catch each one – the boring and the frustrating, the wondrous and the joyful – and claim it for learning and for worship.

Paths intersect with mine; a long and solitary road that’s fed by tributaries until it becomes a rushing river… and we travel on together for a little while. And then some of them branch off again, and flow away on their own beautiful, unpredictable journey.

And I’m always sad when they leave. Sadder, when I realize that their paths may never run parallel to mine again, not this side of the setting sun.

 

But that’s the beauty. Because as the sun sets on this world, it rises on another. And I keep my eyes on the horizon, because one day I’ll finally cross it, and our paths will meet again there, beyond those distant hills, in worship that will never again be bittersweet.

Highways aren’t my home.

No, and they never will be. And I never want to see what’s past in any other light than the future glory, the glory that will be mine when one day I look into the face of my Savior; into the Light so much more glorious than the rising sun. It’s not my glory – it’s too great for that. But I get to be a part of it, and that’s a gift infinitely beyond my own merit, a gift bought by perfect blood.

I can’t see what’s coming – it’s always just beyond the next hill, the next bend in the road. Tomorrow is a mystery waiting to be discovered. But this moment – this set of words – this stretch of road – is here to claim for glory. This moment can be a doing of His will, and a telling of His truth – and so can the next one, and the next, and on, and on, and on, until horizons are no more and death becomes a memory and eternity stretches before.

Highways will lead me home.