Leader's Insight: Risking a Foggy Road

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 asphalt. 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.

But the Son of God pushed on ahead in his suffering because he knew, even if he was momentarily blinded, what was on the road and that the Father was out there … in the fog. This is why his last words would be, “Into your hands I place my spirit.”

Let’s be honest. One does not normally engage in spiritual exercise if one is seeking fun, novelty, or even adrenaline highs. Much day-in, day-out spiritual activity is a kind of work, a discipline (done in quiet and without immediate reward) and it is easy to avoid or put off to times when we believe we will be less busy or distracted. But ask yourself: When will that be?

These thoughts, the product of a slow drive on a fog-bound road this morning, helped me to make new sense out of phrases such as “He went up to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom.” (Luke 4) and “Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed” (Mark 1).

If you ask me, the Savior was, on both occasions, acquainting himself with the road. That’s why, when the fog settled in on other occasions and others wanted quit, he just kept on driving. He knew where he was going.

From William Barclay: In Shaw’s play St. Joan, young Joan hears voices from God. The Dauphin is annoyed. “Oh, your voices, your voices,” he said. “Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king, not you.”

“They do come to you,” said Joan, “but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings, you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel: Greek philosophy began in a world without God. It could not accept the (mythical) gods or the example of their conduct. Plato had to break with the gods and ask: What is good? Thus the problem of values was born. And it was the idea of values that took the place of God. Plato lets Socrates ask: What is good? But Moses’ question was: What does God require of thee?

Pastor and author Gordon MacDonald is chair of World Relief and editor at large for Leadership.

To respond to this newsletter, write to Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net.