God Lurks

Yesterday’s blog about Kathy Bush found me turning off the Road to Jericho from the Good Samaritan story and onto the Road to Emmaus and the story of being accompanied by the sacred.  I thought of a third road and another great story – the Road to Damascus and Paul being knocked off his horse.  It struck me that these three “road” stories have what Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point calls “stickiness” – the stories stay with us.  In every one of them, something significant happens while the main characters are on their way someplace, when they are occupied.  

The Road to Jericho from the Good Samaritan story was full of twists and turns, perilous at night because robbers could hide easily and ambush the traveler. 

The Road to Emmaus was along a ridge, an eight mile walk for the pair who was heading home from Jerusalem, lost in conversation about the rumor of a man raised from the dead, a rumor that excited these two, who had been disillusioned by the loss of this Jesus, who had seemed to be their Messiah.

The Road to Damascus was a journey of several days, so Saul had some time to think.  Maybe that had something to do with is being knocked off his horse, giving us forever that phrase describing our being turned around and changed forever by some event, taken forever from the path we had been on, our momentum diverted forever.

Where were all of these travelers, these busy people, traveling from?  Jerusalem – which has been translated “The Rain of Peace” 

Sometimes it seems that God lurks.  My friend Ken just retired from our university after his own 40 years there, just a year after I did.  Friends all that time, we have children (and grandchildren) of similar ages, and at similar distances.  With time now, Ken has joined Facebook so he can keep up with his kids.  One of his daughters wrote to him and called him a “lurker”; she told him that’s the name given to “friends” who just look, and never participate.  He explained that he didn’t want to insert himself in their lives, just wanted to know how things were going.  And so now once in awhile Ken writes something, or whatever you call somebody stepping into the light on Facebook.

And some think God has retired, too, and hung up the Savior Suit, the Creator Cape, staying a simply soaring spirit, above it all.  But these stories seem to suggest that he meets us all along the way, on whatever way we take, however we workaholics attempt to leave the Rain of Peace behind us, our eyes on whatever horizon of elixir or escape.  This “Road Series” seems to suggest that God Lurks, and from time to time lies before us, or falls into stride with us, or, if necessary, even knocks us off our horse.  

For me, the aneurism that led to my starting this blog was my Damascus Road experience.  But it has been almost a year now, and my heart seems to be fine, and I can’t say that I remain as “converted” as Paul. As we look at the process of becoming more human by looking at the Jericho Road experience of the Samaritan, perhaps it would be worthwhile to consider how we are also taught by those who accompany us, who fall into step with us and break bread with us.  And perhaps it would be worth stopping to recall times in our lives when we have been knocked from our horse. 

Please stop and think or your experiences on these roads, and share your stories in “Comments” below?   I’ll use them in the next few days’ postings.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.