Potholes and Detours
“Frequently my life goes around in circles, hard to tell the beginning impossible the end. Sometimes the road I travel is straight as an arrow but then the road intersects and I stand indecisive, hollowness invades, yet cockily I decide what to travel, and how to travel…only to discover that deep down my life is not as full and rich as it could be… as it was meant to be.”
There always seems to be some kind of road construction in our neck of the woods in the South Bay. Or maybe it’s just that the roads I often take are the ones being worked on. I’ll confess, I’m not the most patient person when it comes to taking detours or waiting on traffic delays regardless of the reason. Not long ago, we were coming home from Costco and it took an hour and a half for what otherwise would have been a 20 minute trip.
And it hit me as I was driving to the office this morning that perhaps our spiritual life is like that. There are periods when we plug along and pay little attention to it - and then when we’re bumping in and out of the “potholes” and “disruptions” of the daily grind, we realize the road of our spiritual life is in need of repair.
Just as many roads and pathways are in need of repair, so too, is our spiritual path in need of attention and “repair” if God’s spirit is to heal and permeate us at the center of our very being.
These winter Sundays we are exploring a sermon series entitled: “Living the Versus of Scripture” as we look at the tensions, struggles, challenges and ambiguities of life. The Christian life calls us to renewal and a reorientation to Gospel values as we seek to be faithful in discipleship to Christ.
We are in a time to remember our connection to God in Christ and re-focus our lives for the next chapter that lies ahead. One of the great theologians of the last century who is part of our UCC heritage, Reinhold Niebuhr, put it this way:
“All life is selfish when it is not changed
by some spiritual influence. Religion can
change us. It challenges us that
we are spiritual beings.”
May this winter season be a time of “road repair” for our spiritual lives – as through our worship we utilize the verses of scripture to live out the “versus” of life with all their pushes, pulls, upsets and uncertainties – all to the end that roadway we follow is God’s and not simple our own.
In Christ who is the Way,
Rev. Dr. David D. Young
Senior Minister
This piece originally appeared in The Wave on January 18, 2023