I think I may have discovered a new “spiritual gift.” I have the ability to find road construction anywhere, any time. Whether I’m travelling across town or across the United States, I have the uncanny knack of always picking the route where the road is torn up or reduced to a single lane. When someone asks, “What’s your sign?” I reply, “Lane closed ahead.” I’ve seen more cones than Baskin-Robbins, but the only flavor seems to be orange.
One day last week I was sitting in traffic (again) and I started thinking. “I wonder if there will ever come a day when all the roads are fixed? A time when there’s nothing left to repair?” I don’t think it’s gonna happen. By the time the last road is fixed, the first one will be in dire need of repair. And what about new roads, roads that don’t even exist yet? As wonderful as it would be, we can’t fix everything at once.
That’s a hard concept for us modern humanoids. And it’s even harder to grasp that our lives are in the same shape as our roads. Every time I start feeling good about one part of my spiritual path, I realize I’ve neglected another part which is now slowing down the flow of traffic. So I begin to concentrate on that needy section … and big potholes develop in the original part. It’s a process that can never be finished. But—just like maintaining the roads—we have to do it. Otherwise, everything slows to a crawl; we can’t move forward at all.
Apparently streets of gold need no such repair. But until we reach the place that has such thoroughfares, we keep patching and paving and painting. Maybe we’re making progress, though. This week, I made it all the way to work without seeing any construction. A little glimpse of heaven. A light unto my (unpaved) path.
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