Reflections

Posted May 25th, 2026

Years ago, I (Robert) scraped the underside of my bumper on some hidden parking lot curb. Scraped it badly. The sound still haunts me.

“SHA#&@^J666KS!!!!” I cursed. Loudly. I was instantaneously enraged and afraid. How could I do something so stupid?!?! Was the car broken?!?!

Even worse, I wasn’t alone in the car. My 11-year-old daughter was in the backseat. Parenting fail.

I’ve read that if you wanted to create outbursts of fear and rage, you couldn’t orchestrate a better environment than driving. The driver is isolated. It’s hard to see other drivers as people. Driving is inherently dangerous. We’re moving huge piles of metal around fast. Any moment could be our last.

To be a peaceful driver is to resist a violent environment.

What are our other environments like? Our political environment? Our media environment? Our workplace? Our home? Our relationships? The environment we create inside our heads by how our inner voices speak about others and ourselves?

Are they orchestrated to help us become more fully Christian, more whole as human beings? Or, do they help do the opposite?

In the famous language of Galatians Chapter 5, do those environments, like a healthy garden, help grow the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, endurance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  

In Luke Chapter 24 we get The Emmaus Story. Two broken-hearted disciples are met on the road of life by the Risen Jesus. Christ shares the story of God with them. They break bread together in a home. Hearts are warmed and eyes opened. The disciples rush out renewed by the incredible good news – the age of new life has come!

This is a story about Jesus, but it’s also about worship and the environment of life.

We journey through life, sometimes in sadness and despair, and in that life Jesus meets us, even if we don’t at first recognize him. We share words and food, and he is there with us, leading us, gifting us new ways to share his hope.

All of life can become orchestrated to connect us to Christ, if we allow it to be so.