To Do You Good in the End

By Mark Altrogge
 
Who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end (DT 8.15-16).
 
A few years ago, our family took a vacation out west. The hardest part of the trip was Kansas (no offense, Kansans). When you drive through Kansas, for what seems like weeks the scenery never varies. Nothing but farmland, farmland, and more farmland starboard, lee, fore and aft. The highway is monotonously straight. After a few hours you enter a state of suspended animation. To stay awake you slap your face and pound your thighs and turn the AC to subarctic. You play “I spy”, with the kids, but you’re finished in 45 seconds after they guess “sky” and “wheat.” You’re so desperate to entertain yourself you start singing Barry Manilow songs.
 
Sometimes life feels like a drive through Kansas.
 
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