Leadership Journal

From my journal: To reach our New Hampshire home (called Peace Ledge) you have to leave a main state route and drive 6.2 miles on a secondary town road that has served our rural area for 250 (plus) years. Originally, the road was merely a footpath (courtesy of native Americans, probably) widened to accommodate colonial horses and buggies. Then, maybe thirty-five years ago, the road was daubed (and redaubed) with asphcaption. But most of it was never drained properly with a supporting bed of gravel and stone. Result: severe frost heaves in late winter, and summertime potholes and cracks which can ruin a tire faster than you can say "global warming" (which I say a lot).

Not long ago, while driving home from somewhere, I did a bit of rough math and calculated that I had probably driven this road 2,800 or more times since we first built Peace Ledge. And, on good weather days, I have run the 6.2 miles if I can get my wife, Gail, to come and get me at the other end. You ask why don't I run three miles down and three miles back? Because the last three miles would be all uphill. I am not stupid.

You can take it to the bank. I know this road very, very well.

I know every curve, every undulation and hill, every place where a dog lives who loves to ambush cars (or runners). I know the old cemeteries (where Revolutionary War dead are buried), the several ponds, and the site of an old 19th century church that burned 100 years ago leaving only its granite front steps as a reminder of its one-time existence.

All of this road acumen came in very handy this morning at 4:45 when I was driving into Concord to join a group of men for whom I have been a sort of spiritual director every Monday morning for the past two years. One of the densest fogs I have ever seen fell on our countryside during the night, and visibility could not have been more than fifty feet. And that's being charitable. On any other road, I would have turned around immediately and returned home.

But this morning I kept going because I know this road so well. All I had to concern myself with was the remote possibility of coming up behind another car (at 4:45 a.m.?) and not seeing it in time. But as for the road: no problem. The car almost steered itself as if we were on instruments.

More than 2,800 times driving this road when conditions are ideal prepared me for a moment like this morning when visibility was almost non-existent.

It occurred to me as I poked through the fog (I was in a reflective mood) that this is why one worships in the sanctuary week in and week out. And this is why one retreats into personal devotional exercises day in and day out. And this is why one journals, reads, sings, and prays.

The almost daily repetition of devotional exercise—like driving my road—is, most of all, preparation for a day when other kinds of fog will roll in and threaten to paralyze life. And—trust me on this—the fog will roll in! It certainly rolled in for Jesus on the cross, and caused him to cry out to the Father, "Why have you forsaken me?" For a moment, it was as if all visibility was at zero.

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