“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10 English Standard Version)
I recently was asked what my favorite way was to travel. Here is how I answered the question. As a teenager, when I walked across town to high school, the rare times that I got a ride hitchhiking, that was my favorite way to travel at the time. Well, that is other than paying ten cents to Jimmy, who somehow had a green and brown 57 Ford, even though he had no job, lived in the same neighborhood I did, and hardly went to school. Hitchhiking had to be on top of my list when it came to traveling in the city. Very rarely did I ride the bus. Do you want to know why? I’ll tell you. Even though I had the student discount card that allowed youth to ride the bus for fifteen cents, I had to choose between using all but a dime of my quarter a day school lunch/transportation/emergency phone call money to ride the bus or instead, walk to school and have enough money for a chocolate malt (15 cents) and a bag of chips (ten cents) at lunchtime. I probably can be credited with the saying, “All that and a bag of chips.” Just kidding!
I thought my dad was kidding about his walking to school, backward in the snow, without an umbrella in the rain, and dressed in sweat-dripping clothes on hot day. I thought it was just a made-up, exaggerated tale to entertain us. But because I did the exact same thing, I changed my mind and accepted his account as one true and without error. The good thing about this is that over all the miles he walked, and I walked, the Lord was being true to the description found in Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Both my father and I made it on our lengthy pilgrimages to school and back home without hurt, harm, or danger.
As an adult, my favorite way to travel was in foreign cars that I purchased. I purchased all kinds of foreign cars and drove them until they were not drivable anymore, or I decided to compulsively change them like I frequently change the décor arrangement in my house. My list of cars would include four Volkswagens, a Jaguar with a Rolls Royce body, two Saabs, a 20-year-old Mercedes, a newer model Mercedes, a Volvo, a few BMWs and then there was one I think was built in America, a Marathon, just like the New York taxi cabs of old. I guess I was making up for those days where my daily budget was 25 cents. Yes, like most people, I probably was trying to make-up for meager times, or it could have been that I just wanted to keep up with the proverbial Joneses.
I no longer hitchhike, no longer buy “luxury” or unique cars. In fact, at the time that I am writing this, I really do not have a car at all. But I can borrow my wife’s car. So today, her car is my favorite way to travel.
In the future, my favorite way to travel will be flying, flying as expressed in one of our old church songs, “Some glad morning when this life is over, I’ll fly away, to a place on God’s celestial shores, I’ll fly away.”‘ Now if you are a believer, a “Praise God” or a “Thank you Jesus” goes right here! Oh, let me not leave out the good part, “My flight was paid for over 2000 years ago by Jesus the Christ on a hill far away. (A “Hallelujah” goes here!)
Hope you enjoyed reading this one! Be blessed!
“When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.” (Proverbs 23:5 English Standard Version)
Committed to the climb,
Mark L. King