When the road gets torn up.

I think it was in the fall that our road got repaved. It took days as they tore up one side, then the other. Paved one side, then the other.

And then it was another few days (weeks?) before they painted the yellow lines, painted the white lines. Then painted over the lines and re-did them?!

Anyhow, our road has been relatively smooth all winter and it's been a nice road. It's been a quiet road because of the bridge being closed (I love the bridge being closed!)

Last night all of the sudden there was a crew tearing up the road. I didn't know why. It was a pain to get out of my driveway, and I was sure they'd be gone when I got home but there were still working when I came home late.

This morning I look out at the road and the once smooth road is covered in muddy tire tracks which will wash away, and a crappy little patch of asphalt which will mellow in time.

It is funny to look out at the road and think "Why couldn't they have done this work before the road was beautifully re-paved? What an ugly mar on an otherwise lovely road!"

But that's not how life works. There was a gas leak and it needed to be fixed! When the road was re-paved was of no concern, nor should it have been!

So why did I think this was worth writing about? Because it's what I'm looking at out of my window, and sometimes you just gotta write things! But also, I was thinking about spiritual life.

It's so much easier to not stir things up. I want the smooth pavement, and I don't want to dig underneath it to fix the problems. It's so much easier to ignore the spiritual gas-leak.

Ignoring it is easier.

But actually it's not. It's killing you! It is slowly killing you, or it could literally blow up in your face!

It's a lot easier to see the truth of that when I look out at a patched up road. Maybe it's because I can see that it's all fine now. Maybe it's because it's not me. It's just a road that I take for granted.

I take way too much of my spiritual life for granted. It's easier to coast by with the smallest amount of maintenance. But that's not what the Lord has in mind for us.

C.S. Lewis is the man! And this passage from True Christian Religion 105 says almost the same thing:

“Divine order requires that a person should adjust himself to receive God and prepare himself to be a receptacle and abode into which God may enter and in which, as in His temple, God may dwell. From himself man must do this, and yet must acknowledge that it is from God.”