The Cracked Acorn: Beside the Road

… “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.” (Exodus 13:19)

It sits beside the road, its glory could be easily noticed, but now the time has gone by and traffic speeds on its way into Culpeper for bargains at one of the Superstores open 24/7. One must be traveling slowly and look to the right and there it is in the madness of timothy, foxtail, clover, and different types of grass almost covering its emplacement. Mother nature is doing its best to hide this interloper. We see these appointments of kindness due to a sense of sadness and loss alongside other roads and highways. Some complain to the Highway Departments that these are distracting and could cause accidents.

How highway monuments got started, when and where, no one knows, they have sprung up. Some are works of art and have tiny white stone encirclement and toys or some item that once belonged to the departed. They are a reminder of human weakness and moments of terrifying strokes of death and injury. Life and death decisions were made at these spots by rescue people and emergency medical technicians. Even though we somewhere at one time or another have been ‘forced’ in the workplace to watch films showing what speed and drugs and alcohol can do at 70 miles per hour on the roads, yet, we go out and still drive cars.

It is the cross, and those who sat it in the ground must believe that there is a God and that there is hope and that eventually somewhere beyond this arena of passing joys and moments of sadness is another place, eternal and there we shall all meet again.

I know, and you know that this could be an inappreciable place and why would anyone want to do this, sits a cross to be soon cast into the landfill or crushed by an attempt to mow and clear the byways for passing motorists. If I could answer that I would have the answers to more of those questions that all of us face from time to time and have to answer, “I don’t know!”

“A little girl was riding on the airplane across the Midwest to spend the summer with her grandparents. She was reading her favorite paperback, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” when a young man took the vacant seat next to her. He attempted to start a conversation, “You know on long flights like this that time can pass more quickly if we have a conversation. I would like to tell you, Why there is no God and no heaven and nothing beyond this earth; you live, and then you die and that’s it”!

With that, the little girl looked up from her book “Do you know why a horse eats green grass and leaves behind round clumps, the cow eats the same grass and leaves behind round patties and the goat does the same and leaves little pellets?” The young man laughed, “I don’t know.”

The little girls said, “The farmer knows, and I know we have nothing to talk about,” and with that, she went back to reading, “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”