Our Broken Road: Growing with Change

In Heaven, there will be streets of gold. Perfect. Smooth.

But that is not the case now.

The road outside our country home was broken, destroyed by a myriad of large machines that had driven on it while constructing a bridge nearby. It literally buckled under the weight, splitting in the middle, creating an impassable trench down the center. Travelers could only brave the edges, steering clear of the 6” chunks of broken asphalt and the bulging basins.

It needed to be fixed.

But the process of fixing a road was a lot more complicated than I thought.

First, the excavators came and dug up entire sections of our road, hauling the debris away in dump trucks that returned later with gravel to fill in the craters. I had to park a few blocks away and walk home because the road was impassable. Then, just as I was able to drive down our street again, the agitators came, scraping up the rest of the road. They literally churned the remaining asphalt in circles, grinding and grinding, shaking our house and releasing old sediment into our well.

The trucks worked day and night, with the “beep beep beep” filling our dreams. At times, I had to cancel my plans because large 4’ piles of filling materials lined the road and blocked my driveway. We sat on the porch watching bulldozers, steam rollers, and dump trucks drive by.

The process was hard, painful, and full of irritation. At times I was angry at the workers for disturbing my plans and my sleep. I wanted to have instant gratification, and when I was told I had to wait, or when the process took longer than expected, I was irate. Why couldn’t it be done now?

But the process needed to take time. The old had to be uprooted before the new could be laid down. The end result was going to be good – great, even – a beautiful, smooth, freshly paved road! Free of chuck holes that ate tires and gravel that chipped windshields. But to get there… oh my.

Then the analogy hit me.

God is making me into a beautiful, paved road, free of chuck holes and gravel. But to get there, it’s going to take some hardships. Trials. Times of waiting. It will be full of irritating people and annoying beeps.

Often, I’m tempted to get angry at the instruments of change. The construction workers. The headaches. The excavators of life. But I know I must patiently endure, because our Great Engineer has ordained all of it for my good.

In the end, I’ll still have moments when I need to get patched or resurfaced. That’s a part of life in this sinful world. But I can look forward in faith to when my faith will be perfected, and in Christ, we’ll all be streets of gold.