The Crooked Shall Become Strait

Yesterday I had a bicycle accident that put me in the emergency room for a few hours. That was a first. (Now that I think of it, I went to an urgent care facility in the sixth grade when I unsuccessfully tried to navigate a sandy corner in front of my parents' house without touching the brakes.) Anyways, this accident had some peculiar circumstances to it that I've not quite figured out yet, so hopefully I'll figure out something as I tell you about it. Kind of like this from Augustine:

"I count myself one of the number of those who write as they learn and learn as they write." -from a letter To Marcellinus

In my last post, I wrote some about the intriguing appearance of threes in the stats of my most significant rides in the past month or so, and that such numeric oddities cause me to ponder God's working in my life. Here they are again, briefly:

• 24 hours of Booty 7/29-30. I reached 333.3 km at 12 hours 12 minutes ride time. 
• group ride 8/6: accident that cracked my frame happened 60 hours before I turned 33 years old
• 8/23: ride from Charlotte after dropping phone: 3:00:00 ride time, 3:33:03 elapsed time after 2 stops
• 9/4: rode every road in Tega Cay: 99.93 miles. Sold a bike before leaving for $333.83.

After I wrote the other night, I read Stephen Furtick's comments about how perception and expectation affect experience and how we interpret it, and  I started to think I'm only making a big deal of these things because I'm looking for them. That may yet be true, but after yesterday's accident, I'm less inclined to think it's just my (mistaken) perception. As I sat waiting in the ER, I realized I was 33 years and 33 days old. There's more though . . .

Last Sunday, when John and I rode every road in Tega Cay, I was pondering part of the sermon text from morning worship.

the voice of one crying in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight,’” (Mark 1:3, quoting Isaiah 40)

This stood out to me particularly because the day's ride route was not straight. As I thought, I remembered what comes after the words above in Isaiah 40:

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level (or "the crooked shall become straight" Luke 3:5)
and the rough places a plain.
And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together,
for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:3-5)

How shall the uneven ground become level, and the crooked ways straight, but by God coming to walk in them? Even the way of the crooked foolish sluggard, full of "thorns" and wandering aimlessly  (Proverbs 15:19; 22:5; Ecclesiastes 10:15), terms which at times have seemed to describe my summer, sounds a lot like what Jesus experienced in his humiliation: born in a barn, driven as a refugee to a foreign land as a toddler; prepared for his time as a teacher in the wilderness with the devil and wild beasts for company; often had to avoid towns or flee from them during his ministry (Mark 1:45 Luke 4:29); when he did head straight toward Jerusalem, encountered opposition (Luke 9:51ff.), and when he got there, he was rejected and executed as a cursed man outside the city (Hebrews 13:12; Galatians 3:13), and on his "way out" of this world (Luke 9:31), all he could see was thorns (Matthew 27:29).

God with us in Jesus is also the answer to the frustrating feeling of undergoing God's discipline, because our elder brother has gone through it first:

Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:3-11)

For the moment it seems painful . . . amen to that. But in these painful experiences of God consuming like a moth what is dear to me (Psalm 39:11), God is treating me like a son, even like His only begotten Son, who lost everything in the path of obedience to the Father: he had no home, lived off donations, his friends and family abandoned him, his last possessions were divided up as he died on the cross. Why should I expect otherwise in walking his path? And why would I want otherwise?

The exhortation linked to this is very pertinent, and brings the theme back around to the idea of "straight paths":

Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. (Hebrews 12:12-13)

I'm still working through what crookedness I need to make straight, but isn't it interesting that I crashed on a rough patch of pavement on Strait Rd?

A few months ago, I mentioned the Heidelberg catechism question 1 as something that expresses my hope when I venture out on hostile roads, and said

Without the will of my heavenly father not a hair can fall from my head. Those cars can't touch me unless God lets them, and that to serve my salvation and everlasting joy. I believe this because God has said it, and because it really does correspond to my experience. I've seen His deliverances on the road and in the circumstances of my life. I can't explain how I've been spared and guided any better way.

No cars touched me this time, but I can't escape the belief that God let me fall but spared me serious injury. So this morning at church, when to my pleasant surprise we recited question 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, I made it about as far as "I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own . . ." before I was too choked up to speak. But I've never believed it more than I do now.