My boys and I went to my nephew’s birthday party last weekend. It’s a six-hour roundtrip drive. There are multiple ways we go, but none of them shave significant time off the trip. We have a preferred route. This time, because of the party location, we chose to make the return trip a different way. This meant a couple of things to me. One, I could drive faster but the traffic was much heavier. Two, because we were heading east, I got some stellar views of an awesome sunset in my rearview mirrors.
We were driving down the interstate about 6 p.m.-ish when I began to get glimpses of the sky behind me. My kids were less impressed but while they occupied themselves, I kept sneaking peeks in my mirrors. A glance at the passenger side mirror delivered a final burst of yellow-orange glow mixed in with the headlights of a vehicle behind me.
I asked my oldest son, sitting in the front with me, to snap a quick photo of the mirror. It drew the “why” you might expect. I told him that I wanted to see the reflecting light with the other thing you see in a passenger mirror – the words, “objects in mirror are closer than they appear.”
He obliged and said, “are you going to write something about that.” Yes, child of mine, yes, I am because sometimes things are closer than we think. Sunsets, or more accurately endings, are certainly closer than we think.
As my soon-to-be 13-year-old handed me back my phone, I glanced at his changing face. Childhood fades like a sunset, doesn’t it? It wasn’t so long ago that I could look in a rearview mirror and see his little baby self all buckled into a car seat. Teenage years were closer than they appeared.
As I continued the drive home my mind lingered on what else is closer than it appears. Naturally, the traffic behind me was closer. I look back and can see a couple of opportunities that I passed on and someone else was closer than I realized. They took advantage of what I passed.
Often people are closer than we think. It’s easy to feel alone or believe we’re heading down a road by ourselves. We think no one understands or no one has been this way before. Maybe when we really open our eyes to reality and not reflections, we’re not as alone as we first think. There are lots of fellow travelers heading in the same general direction.
I thought about how thankful I am for friends who are with me in this current stage of parenting tweens. I think about so many new friends who are living out the call of a ministry that asks them to write and speak publicly when they might rather not. I think about sharing a life with my husband and family and how sometimes we travel a road and sacrifice for the collective good. They are all closer than Satan would have me believe. He often tries to block our view of the support and co-laborers that are journeying by our side.
Most notably the overwhelming thought that saturated my mind in those moments was that God is always closer than we realize. He is with us, in us, and near us, all the time. Sometimes we think He is off in the distance or in some faraway place. He’s not.
“The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth,” says Psalm 145:18. (NIV).
When the Apostle Paul was in Athens in the meeting of Areopagus, he was speaking to people who loved to hear about and discuss current ideas. The idea of a God who created them, ordained their lives, would die to save them, and then be near to them was quiet the concept. It still is and is equally hard to wrap your brain around. In Acts 17:27, Paul explains why.
“God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.”
What a comforting thought as I navigate the roads and the traffic that lead to home, that the God who made the world and everything in it, is closer than He appears. Reach out and find Him. You will not come up empty handed.
