Friday turned out – for me and Rebekah – to be one of our more epic driving days. We got up early, left the house by 6:15, then headed west. Charlotte, Greenville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Calhoun City. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi. That’s a little more than 750 miles in total (including 17 miles heading west, after dinner, when we should have been going east!).

Other than the torrential rains in Georgia and Alabama, and the near tornado conditions in Mississippi, the drive was uneventful. We enjoy one another’s company, great conversation comes naturally, and it was nice to have a singular focus in the middle of these busy and stress-filled days.

It makes me look forward to a day when we can climb in the car together and head out for a week, or a month, or more, heading for the national parks and the mountains and the beaches…

Isolation:

I think that’s what’s driving me crazy right now. Not that we’re not going anywhere so much as we can’t even plan on it. Like the guy who told Rebekah he hates being told he can’t come to church. “But you only come a couple of time a year!” she said. “I know,” he replied, “but now I’m told I have to stay home I really want to be there!”

This long drive out to Mississippi reminds me of what a great, vast, sweeping continent this is we inhabit. How varied, and unique, and diverse we are. And how critically important it is that we do not shut one another down and begin to isolate.

We are shutting one another down in dangerous ways right now as America chooses sides again, shouting at one another and falling into different camps. We have to stop this. Not stop the demonstrating, but stop building the barricades around our own points of view, stop the isolation of heart.

There is so much to think about. So much we must pray about. More to come, when I’m not driving all day!

Peace – in every way – DEREK