The Bungee Cord

Hello,

How fun is it to be caught in a traffic jam for two hours? Let me tell you.

A couple of days ago, I was on my return trip home from visiting my father who is in a care facility in Davenport, Iowa. I was cruising along until I neared Joliet when everything just stopped. A parking lot on Interstate 80. I found myself surrounded by eighteen wheelers…front, back, and side, breathing in their fumes from their exhaust and being shook by the rumbling of their engines. The worst thing about my position amidst the trucks was that I could not see anything ahead of me, so, I had no idea how backed up tings were. For two hours it was a pattern of stopping, creeping, stopping creeping. I was beginning to wonder if I would be stuck there all day.

Ever feel like life is that way, caught in a traffic jam, stuck and seemingly going nowhere? Creeping your way through life surrounded by walls of rumbling trucks? Blinded by the towering semi in front of you? I know that I have. Patience evaporates. Hope withers. Gloom sets in. Anger mounts. Despair creeps in.

Psalm 121 speaks to those times in life.

I lift up my eyes to the hills—

from where will my help come?

2 My help comes from the LORD,

who made heaven and earth.

3 He will not let your foot be moved;

he who keeps you will not slumber.

4 He who keeps Israel

will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 The LORD is your keeper;

the LORD is your shade at your right hand.

6 The sun shall not strike you by day

nor the moon by night.

7 The LORD will keep you from all evil;

he will keep your life.

8 The LORD will keep

your going out and your coming in

from this time on and forevermore.

We are not unaccompanied in those moments. There is one who abides with us in those traffic jams of life, and that one is the one who created all things, seen and unseen (Nicene Creed). That one is the one who has taken hold of you with a cross-born love that won’t let you go when you feel yourself slipping. That one is the one for whom even the darkness is light (Psalm 139). That one is the one who takes on the scorching heat of the sun and blankets you when the night chills. That one is the one who stayed with you when you drove yourself into the jam, the one who remains with you no matter how long the jam may capture you and will glide with you when you are freed from the jam.

If you have ever been caught in one of those highway jams, you know the relief that you feel when the parking lot begins to move, and when you see the end if the jam in sight. But even more so, you know the exhilaration that comes with finally being able to press the accelerator as you revisit the speed limit again. That is the joy that is felt in this life when sins are forgiven, when relationships are restored, and when disease is in the rear-view mirror. And for those life jams that persist, because of the one who took all of life’s jams to the cross and broke out of them on Easter morning, you and I can live with the certain hope that the day will come when even the most motionless of jams, death, will break apart and we will soar in a delight beyond anything we have felt before.

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

See less

Shared post