30 March 2022
Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
As I was walking along one day, a motorist stopped and asked me for directions to the hospital. He was, in fact, very close, but the road was closed for construction, so the only way to get there was via a lengthy and confusing detour. I explained that the directions were too complicated, and I offered to ride with him and direct him in real time. In fact, I had been on my way to visit a patient in the same hospital. He accepted my offer, and within a few minutes, he was at his destination. It was a stranger who found the way for him.
Finding a way through mountains is another story. In 2013, workers finished digging a tunnel almost a mile long through the through the top of a mountain range in Peru at an elevation of over 15,000 feet. Although the tunnel is hidden under 5,000 feet of rock and ice, the floor of the tunnel courses along at a level higher than any mountain peak in the continental United States. Human ingenuity found a way through almost impassible obstacles.
For God, there are no impassible obstacles, seeming or otherwise. The prophet Isaiah put it this way: “He who pities them leads them and guides them beside springs of water. I will cut a road through all my mountains, and make my highways level” (Isaiah 49:10-11). God chooses to have compassion for us creatures, so he cuts a road for us through any mountain. When no way seems possible, and when human ingenuity has failed, God, still, lays down a highway. As it turns out, God’s highway is, itself, true life. “I am the way, the truth and the life, says the Lord” (John 14:6).