Monika Hilder

Driving on our busy highways, like so much in our world, can be a grim experience. We really weren’t meant to live like this, were we? With the ever-increasing congestion, growing frustration over more (and more) time spent on the road, and sharpening wariness over risk-taking drivers, some outright nasty–or was that me?– this can do a number on one’s heartrate. Add to this unfavourable weather, such as those of us experience on the Wet West Coast, well, it surely makes you wish for better—but better what? And better how? Maybe, better where?

It’s one thing to search out the restorative byways, those quieter places we cherish, but does this help in the duress of ugly traffic conditions? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Perhaps the restoration increases one’s ability to endure stress—that is the idea, right?—but perhaps the roadway stress experienced depletes our inner resources faster than we can restore them.

Yikes! Nooooo–! Relax, did you say? Did you see how close that truck got to us? And the sedan that just cut across our lane? The cars that wouldn’t give way as we needed to merge? Oh no, that motorcyclist weaving in and out as if he— Brakes, gear down furiously, avoid the . . . CRASH! 

As much as I enjoyed getting my motorcycle license as a young person (what was I thinking?!), I had little inclination to ride one then and none in today’s traffic. No, no. Instead, put me in my green canoe Dreamglider on a calm mountain lake: make that early in the morning or before sunset when the water is glass-clear-still and I can watch the loons . . . there you go, that’s it. Dip, stroke, inhale, exhale . . . rejoice. That’s more like it.

This Christmastide, I’m pondering the highways of our lives. The messy, busy highways that we must take: the day-to-day roadways as well as the superhighways of much information and of multiplying tasks. This Christmastide, and as we approach the new calendar year, we might ask, “What is needful? Where can I speed up, sure, but where can I also slow down? Which road must I take, and when the next fork in the road appears, which one is mine to take, or to avoid?”

I continue to ponder The Fellowship of the Ring that I referred to in my last blog, where Tolkien wrote, “The Road goes ever on and on.” And we follow, yes, pursuing our roads sometimes with “eager feet,” as Bilbo does, and at other times with “weary feet,” as Frodo must. Our individual roads do indeed join larger ways, ways “where many paths and errands meet”—not always to our liking, but ever a reminder that we are part of a larger story, a very large story. And it matters how we travel, both along the quiet byways and then along the busy, noisy highways. In the stress and grime of it all, how might we travel well? Get there, whole? Guarding our hearts from all that would assail, weaken, distract, undo, steal, even destroy. . . .

This promise from the Psalmist comes to mind: “Blessed are those whose strength in in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion” (Psalm 84:5). Mystery: the highways to the Kingdom of Heaven in a human heart. Or said another way, a human in whose heart are God’s ways. That’s where the next few verses begin to make more sense to me. If our strength is in Him, then as we travel through trouble and distress, even there blessing attends us so that we can travel “from strength to strength” (verses 6-7). The writers of the Psalms should know, having passed through many a trouble and outright tribulation, and lived to sing the story: I’ll take their word for it and claim it for myself. How about you?

And on these busy highways of my days, when I feel like the hobbit Merry, who realizes that he wouldn’t have had the heart to venture into the wider world had he known of the dangers that awaited him, I focus on Tolkien’s elf Haldir’s answer: “Not even to see fair Lothlórien? The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” Many perils, yes, but much that is fair—and with the grief, love, love that can grow all the greater. Let me think on this.

When byways are hard to come by, and the highways of my days get busier, increasingly challenging, I’d like to remember that my strength is not my own—and so be refreshed. I recall the encouraging words from The Divine Comedy: “. . . to cheerful thoughts betake thee; / Feed thy faint heart with hope, and calm thy breast, / For in this underworld I’ll not forsake thee” (Canto VIII, ll. 105-7). It is indeed another bright reminder of what is and of what is to come: the brightening light that has arrived, that no darkness can quench, and that will shine ever brighter, everlastingly. In that spirit then, in that hope, in whatever distresses are before me, I want to join in on the growing chorus from Isaiah: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord.” Or, as Eugene Peterson rendered it in The Message: “Prepare for God’s arrival! Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God.” What can this mean?

For starters, whether on pleasanter byways or on less pleasant highways, may I begin to breathe again—and pray. And repent. Repent: ask for forgiveness. Pray for the stressed drivers all around me. Pray blessings on others, the kind (that’s easy) and the unkind (not at all easy, but ask yourself, as someone once asked me, “Has anyone ever prayed for that person?”). Gradually, then, perhaps the ways of my heart could become a highway fit for God—such a mystery, such a wonder. Grace. And though “love is now mingled with grief,” may love grow “perhaps the greater.” May it be so. Grace.

I’m asking for a lot, I know. But what I could never do, He can, so there it is.

Wishing you blessings on the paths that you must take. And a richly blessed Christmastide.

Thanks for reading, for listening.

You can order your copy of Letters to Annie at Amazon, FriesenPress, or through your local bookstore.

Sign up to receive my blogs at https://monikahilder.com/

Follow me on Social Media:

Facebook

Watch for my Spring blog in March: “Participatory Holiness”