Photo credit: Tim Gouw
There’s a large intersection close to my house. I use it every time I drive to work.
It’s a long light. A long, long, long light. Interminable.
Tonight I pulled to a stop just as it turned red, and I thought I’d time that unbearable light.
It held me up for a whole one minute and forty-five seconds.
Years ago there was a line in a novel I read – I think it was by Donald E. Westlake – where the narrator noted that a particular awful stoplight delayed him an “excruciating” forty-five seconds.
We’re kind of spoiled, you know? I live in constant, low-level fear that Divine Justice will teach me a real lesson in patience someday.
I feel ya.
I am learning to appreciate forced kindness. There is a hint of God in the wait to allow the hordes to pass that doesn’t exist on the stress-laden offensively-driven limited access highways. And even though I appreciate getting from one place to another quickly, I also love seeing the subtle principal of grace found in the order God has made for us unruly humans. I love the verse “God is not a god of chaos, but a God of peace.” And that peace literally shines forth in every red light.
I think Charles Williams would have agreed with you. He was fascinated with the image of the City as the Kingdom of God.