Gifts From the Road

We recently took a trip to visit family in Mississippi. Our kids had a wonderful time and were more than a little sad when it came time to leave. To make matters worse, our daughter Molly Katherine discovered that she left something at my parents house when we had made it thirty minutes down the highway. It was not a turn around worthy item. It was one of those simple chunks of plastic that define a five year old's life for a few hours. I tried to console her by saying, "Molly Kat, the road gives us gifts." The road produced a gift a little bit later.

My parents gave the kids jars of coins when we left. They let them play with them and then handed them as gifts. A few hours into our trip we found a Coinstar machine at a grocery store. We let them feed their jars of filthy money into them.  We were surprised when the machine spit our coins from India, Israel, Russia and other countries.  These were coins that I had tossed into the big coin jar at my parent's house years ago - gifts from the road. The kids took their receipts and purchased more chunks of plastic. I pocketed the international loot and  remembered good times. The road really does offer us gifts.

Life is a journey and God wants us to receive his gracious gifts along the way.  We must develop a reflective attitude in order to appropriate this traveling mercy. I highly recommend Alister McGrath's wonderful introduction to Christian spirituality titled, The Journey: A Pilgrim in the Lands of the Spirit. He writes about the type of posture we need by summarizing it this way: Remember, Anticipate, Resolve to deepen the quality of our Christian faith and life in the present. He is a sound traveler and we'd be wise to hitch a ride with him. Check out the book and enjoy the gifts of the road.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seriously? That's your message? "God want's us to receive gifts"? Where do you get this from God's word Dr. Snowden? We can understand from the Bible that God 'gives good gifts' as a good father would give good gifts, IF we ask (Matthew CH. 7) but God is certainly not just dumping 'gifts' on us where ever we go

Matt Snowden said...

Yep. That is the message. Hasn't God surprised you with grace? He loved us before we could pray. He gave us life and gives us each breath.

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