NIght Driving

Something magical about being a kid and driving at night, isn't there? Usually you're up past your bed time, driving to or from somewhere wonderful. The car has a glorious, rhythmic hum to it. Lights and cars and trucks go by. You're safe and warm and drowsy and all is right with the world.

I think that there's something that points to what true faith looks like in the trust that a child has in their parents as they sleep in the back seat of a car at night.

So we left from Cheasapeake, Va, home of Kelly's parents (a.k.a. Nanny and Grampy) on Saturday night in order to beat the traffic rush on I-85. There were ten miles of single-lane misery waiting for all us I-85 travelers just south of South Hill, and we knew that if we waited until Sunday we'd be stuck in some seriously snarled traffic.

As we passed through rural southeastern Virginia, I caught a glimpse of a guy sweeping up in a laundromat. I instinctively felt pity. What kind of life is it to be sweeping up in the laundromat in Lacrosse, Va, at 8:30 p.m. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving?

All my worldview tells me that by virtue of my educational opportunities, my travels, my life experiences, my work, and my general socio-economic status, I have a vastly superior life as compared to anyone who would be sweeping up at a laundromat at 8:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening in Lacrosse, Virginia.

But as I've thought about this further, I've realized that I must not be too hasty. Quality of life is a tricky thing to measure and snapshots seldom tell the whole story. Moses, David and Jesus all spent long years doing menial tasks. And many today who live much more richly than I do by financial standards live much more poorly than I do in terms of the quality of life.

So I think my job is to bless the guy at the laundromat. I need to do what I can to ensure that there's opportunity for people in our country to pursue education and jobs that they enjoy. And in my matrix of what that looks like, there has to be room to include sweeping up the laundromat--even as I think that I'd feel better about that if he was cleaning up the laundromat that he owned and not for someone else.