Thursday, December 4, 2025
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Love, love, love
As usual the car is packed full, to the gills as they say. I slept well and woke up well and was on the road by 8:45 Wednesday morning.
At 8:46 the local bus stopped and dropped off riders in front of our house. At 8:47 the Urbana recycling truck pulled up, picked up and emptied our green plastic container with their auto-bucket. At 8:48 Mel’s Trash Service followed right along, and two guys emptied one bag at a time into their truck, because our container was so heavy. If I’d left a minute later I would have been sitting in our driveway for awhile, twiddling my thumbs.
I wanted to bring the trash receptacles back away from the street but didn’t get the chance. The snow makes everything more difficult. It is so quiet and white and beautiful coming down, and then it’s just a bunch of hard work. Which I still enjoy, getting out in the cold air with the right warm clothes on, but now I also feel the joy of heading south in December. No need to go all the way to Jamaica; Austin will do nicely.
So many endless southern Illinois forests, that were beautiful on Halloween but now look bleak, stony gray, and silent. Deer hide from hunters, and every animal does its best to burrow in somewhere out of the cold and the snow. Underbrush is often non-existent because everything on the brush and bushes now is on the ground. Looking through the trees, I think I can see for miles.
Trust in the LORD forever!
       For the LORD is an eternal Rock.
   He humbles those in high places,
       and the lofty city he brings down;
   He tumbles it to the ground,
       levels it with the dust. Â
The thousand miles between Urbana and Austin go kinda fast on the interstate highway routes I take, and I always wish I could take more time and explore the blacktops that trickle through the woods beside small wilderness lakes, up the hills and down again. My route takes me near southern Illinois’ Garden of the Gods, and then south of Little Rock, Hot Springs National Park, and at last along the edge of the piney woods and lakes of east Texas. I know how graceful and beautiful those back roads can sometimes be, because sometimes I do choose those routes and get off the big fast never-ending highways. No semi-trailers back there, just a tractor now and then.
But this time I am taking just the fastest routes. For gas I generally skip Buc-ee’s and stop mostly at truck stops. I downloaded the Love’s Truck Stop app, so their gas is ten cents off, and it’s usually the lowest price anyway. Other truck stop chains offer similar discounts, but I like to stop at Love’s and spend a minute taking in their map of the United States. Love’s truck stops dot the highways going east, north, south, and especially all the way out west.
The map helps me remember trips we’ve taken and imagine new trips – along Route 66, through the New Mexico Navajo country, up into South Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho to Washington, through Michigan into Canada and Niagara Falls, through Texas to Big Bend Country and the desert… more than McDonald’s signs, the Love’s sign sings to me all along the way. Uncle Merlie turns 100 in February, and I hope I will make time to attend his party in North Carolina. On the way I’ll get to discover a whole different set of highways and truck stops and forests, lakes and mountains – so much beauty, so much peace, so much rest.
Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
(Isaiah 26, Psalm 118, Isaiah 35, Matthew 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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