"did you hear that potato wagon rolling in?"
thoughts on: the midwest. my daddy. storms.

i had forgotten what driving across the midwest is like. in the midwest, the land is flat. the trees are scarce. so the road stretches out in front of you for miles. it seems as though it will never end. i asked my dad today, "on a clear day, how far can you see?" "50 miles or so," was the reply. he should know. he grew up in the panhandle of texas where the land is flatter and the trees even more scarce (if that is possible) than the kansas road i travelled today.

where the land stops, the sky- a beautiful blue- begins and ascends forever until it's on top of you and behind you and all around you. the sky really is tremendous out here.

the towns along I-70 are tiny, for the most part. little farming towns like the one where my dad grew up. as he put it today, "the high-rise building in most of these little towns is the grain elevator." as if i know what a grain elevator is. but i know what one looks like now. :-)

i drove all day today. it was long. it was extremely uneventful. my passengers slept most of the day (including the cat). so i felt alone most of the day. not a sad alone. just alone. gave me time to take it all in. most of it was rather dull. until evening.

i wish i could adequately describe what i saw tonight. it may seem rather mundane to some of you, but i thought it was amazing. it was rain. storms. in the distance.

in these flatlands you can see the storms form in the distance. you know how in alien movies when they "beam down" from their spaceship - there's this light ray that shoots down from the ship. that's what it's like when you look out and see the storms. gray-blue "beams" of storms interspersed between carolina blue patches of non-rain. lots of them. all across the horizon. kinda looks like thick vertical sripes across the sky.

we drove right into the storms. the stipes got wider and darker as we got closer. it rained. it thundered. it lighteninged. and then it stopped 10 minutes later.

such are storms in the midwest.

as i said above, i know i did not adequately describe what i got to see tonight. i hesitated to even try. but i wanted you to see it. i wanted you to be there.

to see this huge expanse of a sky and be reminded that the heavens tell of the glory of God. to see the fields and remember that you, a small creature on this earth, are like grass that withers and falls. to see the road stretching out in front of you and recall that even as a small creature, there is purpose - a path of life. a to see the rains pouring down in strips in front of you and discover agian that the same God that controls the lightening, the rain, the storms has adopted you according to the purpose of His will and is equipped as your Father to direct your heart to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.

such were the thoughts i was flooded with. i wanted you to share them.

i wanted you to be there.