A Vast Wilderness

Every day I teach, I take a 20-minute drive from Nashville to Murfreesboro. This drive is nothing at all compared to the pain of the morning commute into Nashville everyday.

In fact, the drive just flies by. I listen to the radio, engage myself in my own thoughts, or eat McDonald's as I drive.

But today I woke up. I didn't eat McDonald's, didn't listen to the radio, and didn't think. And I realized a strange and wonderful truth.

Between me and Murfreesboro stretches a vast wilderness I must cross. The drive there is not so much a morning commute as it is an excursion between two remote outposts of civilization; outposts on the cusp of a vast expanse.

The road itself, the buildings dotting that road, and my own thoughts had hidden this from me.

But just looking at the reality as it flashed by convinced me that if I were to rise up a few hundred feet, the truth would be seen: this was nothing more than a flimsy covering laid on top of the wilderness underneath. The flimsy covering couldn't begin to actually contain the reality that stretched out away from it and beneath it for hundreds of miles.

Odd things happen when you stop and observe.