On road trips when our kids were young, we did things old school. There were no DVD players to make the miles seem shorter. We relied on books on tape. And the alphabet game. And stops at Welcome Centers with each state line we crossed. We've covered lots of miles.
No matter what we tried, or where we traveled, at least five times along the way, a small voice would rise up from the back seat to ask, "Are we there, yet?" or "How much longer do we have to go?" or "When can we get out of this stupid car?!?!?!" I answered with the facts: No, we're not there yet. We have 326 miles to go, at 60 miles per hour, which means we probably have about...well...we still have quite a long way to go. We don't say stupid. The car isn't stupid.
None of that worked.
One day, after I'd run out of answers which meant nothing at all to the small voices rising from the back, H - in his great wisdom - answered, "We're closer than we've been all day." And that was that. He was right. And he gave us something to think about.
I think Christmas is just like that. God put on skin and moved in with the family next door - the family whose daughter sat next to you on the bus ride to school; and ever since that night in a smelly old barn, under a big bright star, we've been closer to Him than we've ever been before.
Just one more thing: I know the next two Sundays are big ones but - in case you were wondering - I'll still have the Sunday link-up ready to go on Saturday night. Don't feel pressured to participate. Just know that it will be here for you. The thing is, I have been so blessed by the images and the words you share, that I want to make sure the link-up is available to those who might drop by to share, or to receive a word of encouragement along the way.
1 comments:
as many things still came in wooden boxes in the fiftys, my dad would put one on each side of the floor hump in the back seat floor of our car, and then he would put a board across them and make a bed out of the back seat for my sister and i. That is how we traveled on one long trip...i think it might have been the one to florida from our home in southern illinois. sometimes i would get up onto the back window and watch the world go by from there. he always liked to leave in the in the very early morning...which i would call the middle of the night for clear roads...and of course my sister and i would sleep for a few hours down the road too.
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