“A voice of one crying in the wilderness:
Prepare a way for the Lord.
Make his paths straight.”
John 1:23
It is almost a week after Christmas and I am still thinking about the Advent readings, especially this idea of making a straight path. As my family might tell you, I am quite easily distracted, moved off task, redirected even. My paths tend to be anything but straight—even when I drive! I remember my first car, a white 1978 Honda Civic with a stick shift, no AC and only AM radio. I remember how that car taught me the importance of shade. And the blessedness of trees. I cannot count how many times I had to answer the question: Why are you going this way? The freeway is faster. And my answer was always: Memorial Drive is shadier—and you get to drive through the park.
I say this for two reasons; first, because I want to be honest. I am not someone normally concerned with making straight paths, nor innately inclined in that direct direction either. However, as I have grown older and as life has become more complicated, I find that –especially when it comes to driving—that I tend to not take as much delight in detours as I once did. I have a tendency these days to try and get home asap. And stay there, if possible. And second, because I am about to take a detour.
It was the Sunday before Christmas, and I was driving some groceries over to one of my daughters (at UH). Of course, our current car has air conditioning and even has one of those USB things that lets you listen to music off a thumb drive. Which means I can download old Jack Benny Radio Shows and listen to them while I drive. Some people listen to podcasts, others audiobooks. I listen to 1940s radio shows. Did you notice I just took a little detour? An aside? Anyway, back to my story. I was out delivering groceries, and hoping (as always) to get back home ASAP. I had important stuff on the agenda: plans to watch a movie with my wife and maybe even take a nap… I was making a straight path right back to my couch! I’m all about grabbing that gusto wherever I can!
But the Lord had other plans. Heading back home, suddenly the traffic slowed, and then stopped and then inched forward bit by bit. There was one of the many Houston traffic closures happening that weekend. A bridge or something was being repaired and all the I-10 west traffic was being rerouted. We had to stay on 45 headed north. I wasn’t too frustrated because I was enjoying a jazzy number by Phil Harris’s orchestra, and we used to live in the Heights; I knew I could pretty easily find my alternate route home. I would just exit North Main and drop by the old Shipley’s for a doughnut and some coffee and be home in no time. I thought.
Apparently, everyone else did, too. The North main exit was backed up onto the freeway, so I kept going. I think I took the next exit—Patton? Anyway, I got off, turned left and knew if I just kept going straight I would come to something I recognized. So there I was, trying to make a straight path when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone I recognized—or thought I did. It was a friend who died about 2 years before. I slowed down and looked back, knowing it couldn’t be him and realized it was a homeless man. Thin, ragged, long hair, long beard, walking half bent over through a parking lot. I think I was still on Patton. Just a block or two from the freeway. I saw him and thought –how strange that he had looked just like our friend Forrest, and yet on second glance not at all. And in the rearview mirror I thought I saw him lean against a wall and then kind of slump to the ground.
It was a strange thing to see, but I was on my way home and actually in a bit of a hurry now with all the detours. I wanted to get home to that movie and that nap. So, I kept going. Kept trying to make that straight path… And then I thought of Forrest again, and how he would care for people when they were down on their luck. How many times he even came to take care of me and my family when we were feeling down on our luck. How he would go out of his way to help just about anyone. And suddenly I found myself turning around.
Another detour? Perhaps, but I drove back and there the man was sitting on the pavement just outside the store, huddled up, with his coat pulled closed and his knees pulled up near his chest, his head slouched over.
I got out of my car and walked over to him. Asked if he needed anything. Some money? He looked up with the eyes of the lost, as if the last thing he expected to see was someone offering help. I got down on one knee beside him and we talked for a few minutes. His name is Adolph. And he wanted to know what church I went to. He then told me about a church over by Mattress Mack’s store. How kind they were to him when his brother died. How they helped him and took such good care of his brother for him. I don’t know how long we talked, maybe 10 or 15 minutes. At some point he seemed done. His eyes looked away, exhausted, as if he needed to rest. I gave him what money I had, and he looked at it like it was something strange and unexpected. Before I left, I told him I would pray for him and asked him to pray for me.
I got back in my car and drifted through the Heights toward Studewood and back to I-10, thinking about Adolph and about how I almost drove right past him. There is that famous scene in John’s Gospel where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well. He asks her for a drink of water. She is surprised that a Jewish man would ask help from a Samaritan woman. But He says to her: If you only knew what was being offered you… (cf. 4:10) That phrase, offered you, seems to me quite important. What was it that was being offered to her? A thirsty man was asking her for water... He needed a drink and had no way of getting it. She was being offered a chance to help someone. To serve them. In fact, she was being offered a chance to serve God… Driving home I realized that in my hurry to get back home to my couch and TV, I almost missed that chance myself.
Making a straight path doesn’t mean making an easy one, or making the quickest one. As St. Teresa of Avila once said, “God writes straight with crooked lines.” In my efforts to make a straight path, I need to remember that. What looks crooked to me, may be leading me straight to where I need to be. And so, the question I am now asking myself is this: Where does my straight path lead? Does it lead straight back to the couch, or does it make room for a detour that might just become a blessing?
