06/15/2026
God, who meets us on the back roads
There was a brief window of time Thursday evening — the kind that opens like curtains on a quiet stage — and I rolled my little E‑bike out onto the driveway. No helmet on my dome, just me riding down the street like a rebel in complete silence. Hard to be a rebel when you don’t make any noise, but I did my best with loafers on my feet.
My one‑gear wonder E-bike tops out around 10 MPH before my legs start looking like a blender someone forgot to turn off. That’s usually when I stop pretending I’m an athlete and let the battery take over. Mercy is a spiritual gift, and I give it to myself often.
I rode up and down the hills near home and found a stretch of freshly laid blacktop — smooth as silk where potholes used to rattle your teeth. A clean ribbon of asphalt stretched out in front of me, like someone had prepared the way.
Trees lined both sides, thick and green, forming a canopy over the road. Rabbits darted across the road in and out of tall weeds. Black cows stared at me with their big black eyes like I was an alien who’d escaped from a spaceship. Maybe it was my hairdo? One deer saw me shot off like a rocket, white tail bouncing in the air. Another deer ran alongside me for a bit, keeping pace from a distance, like it was a game.
Down in the low ground, the creek was talking — water rushing over rocks, singing its old song. I rode far enough to know I’d better turn around before the battery died and left me pedaling home like a man being punished for his sins.
But somewhere on that quiet ride, something holy settled in.
Life doesn’t always give us long stretches of time. Sometimes it’s just a brief opening — a sliver of evening, a quiet moment, a breath. But God can fill even those small spaces with wonder if we’re willing to roll out of the driveway.
The smooth blacktop shows that God still lays fresh paths where old ones were broken. The trees, still reach for the heavens, His creation still worships without saying a word. Like the deer, God’s presence sometimes runs alongside us quietly, just to let us know we’re not alone.
The flowing creek, like His voice, is steady, even when life feels rushed. You don’t need a mountaintop to meet God. Sometimes He shows up on a country road with cows staring at you and your legs spinning like a blender.
“He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.”
Psalm 23:3
Not highways. Not busy streets. Paths. Quiet ones. Country‑road ones. The kind you only find when you turn off all the electrical gadgets with screens and slow down enough to take notice.
Maybe God isn’t asking us to go faster. Maybe He’s asking us to notice Him, the peace He offers, and the small windows of time He opens in our week. Just maybe, a few moments of silence from all the stuff bouncing around in our craniums, we become still and listen to God.
