Bungee Cord 7-23-13

Hello,

     Here’s a quiz to start off this week’s Bungee Cord.  What town is hometown to Arnold Palmer, Mr. Rogers, and the Ice Cream Sundae?  What the locals know, now all the readers of Bungee Cord now know, the answer:  Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

     Latrobe is the closest “big” town to where I live, 15 miles away.  It houses things like Wal-Mart and Lowes.  So, with some regularity, I make my way to Latrobe, and the way that I get there is to take the road over the ridge, Bethel Church Road, the most direct route.  When I say direct, I mean, direct by how the crow flies, not by the straightness of the road.  In order to go up and over the ridge, Bethel Church road squiggles and bends.   After you travel about 2/3 ways along the twisting road, a rather curious sign greets you.  It’s a yellow, squarish sign that sits on one of the corners of the square, and it reads, “WINDING ROAD NEXT 2 ½ MILES”.

     The first time I encountered this sign I thought to myself, “What did they think the last 7 miles were?”  It seems quirky that this warning should come closer to the road’s end than at its beginning.  I guess that I should feel lucky that I regularly safely traverse the first 2/3 of the way without a warning.  Also, interestingly enough, the 2 ½ miles left in the journey is far less winding than what came before…..the straightest parts come after the sign!

     In a strange way, the placement of this sign seems to mirror often what I find myself “signing” in life.  As a pastor, I find myself intersecting with people’s lives at various legs of their life’s trek, some at the very beginning, but most after they have travelled a good long ways.  Often I run into them where the road has taken a sharp turn, a turn that they have had difficulty negotiating.  Sometimes I find myself amid tragic circumstances and other times I need only be there to lend a hand to get them back on the road.  But whatever the situation, I get the feeling that God is using me like that yellow sign on the road forewarning, “WINDING ROAD AHEAD”.

     It is not like the road hasn’t been winding up to this point in their lives, but as can be the case for all of us, we can either get caught up in the scenery, or focused on where we are going that we haven’t really noticed how winding it has been.  We haven’t noticed how many sharp turns we have made, or how many times we have had to hit the breaks hard until the winding road makes itself known to us when we slide off.

     Sometimes I find people surprised when the road has won and they have slid off, but if we mapped the road of everyone’s life, we would see that no one travels the long and straight roads, like the ones in the plains of South Dakota.  The roads we all travel on are like Bethel Church Road, squiggling and winding.  Roads where turns come upon us out of nowhere, and deer do, too.

     The good news is that God knows the winding-ness of our roads.  He knows it because he has travelled them himself in Jesus.  He knows how easy it is to slide off of a hairpin turn that you didn’t know would be there, and he knows how often something leaps from the woods and crashes into you.  And so when those things happen, you won’t here Jesus reprimanding you for your bad driving.  Instead he will set you and me back on the road, lovingly forewarning you, “WINDING ROAD AHEAD”, and telling you as you put your hands on the steering wheel….”and I’ll be there for you at every turn.”

Have a great (winding) week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger