Safe Travels: The Lord and Lake Shore Drive

The Lord keeps you from all harm and watches over your life. The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever.

Psalm 121:7-8

There’s a road I’d like to tell you about, lives in my home town
Lake Shore Drive, the road is called and it’ll take you up or down
From rats on up to riches, fifteen minutes you can fly
Pretty blue lights along the way, help you right on by
And the blue lights shining with a heavenly grace, help you right on by.
“Lake Shore Drive” – Skip Haynes

I am sure every major city, and most smaller ones, has “the street” that everyone has cruised as a young person. Colfax Avenue in Denver is the longest street in the United States and Younge Street in Toronto is the longest street in Canada. The ability to “mix it up” with friends on city streets predates the automobile, but having a car on Friday night made all the difference, especially for we individuals of “a certain age”.

Growing up in Chicago, Lake Shore Drive was, by far, my favorite. Fortunately, city planners kept retail and residences some distance from Lake Michigan, so, basically, when you’re on this road, you are able to take in God’s wonders, while concentrating on traffic. It’s a remarkable engineering feat. It is also very personal. If you want to take time to talk to God as you’re driving, you have the right atmosphere.

In my youth, I had much to consider that I wanted to consider strictly on my own. Given that gas was much cheaper, this was doable. It was my chance to dream, to hope, to wonder, what is my place in this world? What will I do? What can I do? Who might be on the trip with me? Driving on an interstate is not the same. That is a continuous ribbon of road, with no personality, no invitation to do anything but soldier on to your destination.

Driving to no particular destination is its own adventure. It is simply a journey, an individual search for what God’s plan is for me. I don’t recall thinking that deeply about life and the personal journey ahead at age 20, or even at 23, as I was on Lake Shore Drive, headed back to my family home in the suburbs with news my job had been eliminated. That was a long, impersonal drive, but, a couple  of weeks later, a door opened for me to take what turned out to be a life-altering experience.

Wherever roads have taken me, I am assured that the Lord is watching over me, guiding me, and protecting me. He is doing the same for you, and that smooths the road, wherever it leads.