{"id":5493,"date":"2026-06-09T07:56:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:56:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5493"},"modified":"2026-06-09T07:56:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:56:53","slug":"prepare-the-way-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/09\/prepare-the-way-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Prepare the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

In the summer of 1919,\u00a0the U.S military \u2013 less than a year after the end of\u00a0World War I \u2013 undertook a major mission.

Their goal was to find out if it was possible to drive from one coast of the United States to the other.

Thus was born the Motor Transport Corps Convoy, a train of 81 trucks and vehicles that carried almost 300 officers and enlisted men.\u00a0There was serious doubt that they could actually succeed.

The convoy left Washington D.C. on July 7 and headed west, following a route that would one day become the Lincoln Highway.\u00a0They snaked their way through 11 states and more than 350 communities.\u00a0\u00a0

The roads, to put it bluntly, were rough. From Illinois to Nevada, most of them\u00a0were little more than dusty trails.\u00a0\u00a0

The convoy’s official journal logged more than 230 “road incidents.”\u00a0Those included vehicle collisions, trucks mired in mud above their axles, and wooden bridges that collapsed under the weight of so many wheels. In all, the soldiers had to rebuild 88 bridges along the way.\u00a0\u00a0

Twenty-one men\u00a0suffered injuries and had to drop out.\u00a0Nine of the trucks broke down and were left behind.\u00a0Long before the era of billboards and\u00a0Buc-ee\u2019s, there was almost nothing to shatter the monotony.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

The convoy finally arrived in San Francisco on September 6.\u00a0It had taken 62 days to traverse 3,250 grueling miles.\u00a0The trucks averaged 5.67 miles per hour, an exceedingly low bar for what would one day become known as the Cannonball Run.\u00a0

But the experiment had been\u00a0a success.\u00a0Americans now knew it was possible to drive from sea to shining sea. Even more important, the trip ignited the imagination of a young military officer who had joined the trip, as he later put it, “on a lark.”\u00a0\u00a0

His name was Dwight D. Eisenhower, future commander of the Allied forces in\u00a0Europe during World War II, and president of the United States from 1953 to 1961.\u00a0

Eisenhower never forgot his trip across the wilderness of the United States.\u00a0That’s his personal scrawl\u00a0(“East Wyoming”) on the photo above.\u00a0

He resolved that the country should have fast, beautiful, multi-lane highways.\u00a0Today they are known as the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, and it’s possible that you will drive on one before you go to bed this evening.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

America’s interstates have some\u00a0features you may not have noticed.\u00a0According to the original design, every fifth mile was to be straight (in case a plane needed to make an emergency landing).\u00a0And every overpass was to be high enough to accommodate the passing of a truck carrying a nuclear-tipped ICBM. Eisenhower was president, after all, during the Cold War.\u00a0

He knew what it took to prepare\u00a0highways for his homeland, and he made it happen.\u00a0

What would it take to prepare a highway for God?\u00a0\u00a0

A familiar text in the book of\u00a0Isaiah the prophet answers that very question.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

“A voice of one calling: ‘In the wilderness prepare\u00a0the way for the Lord. Make straight in the desert\u00a0a highway for our God.\u00a0Every valley shall be raised up,\u00a0every mountain and hill made low;\u00a0the rough ground shall become level,\u00a0the rugged places a plain.\u00a0And the glory of the Lord will be revealed,\u00a0and all people will see it together.\u00a0For the mouth of the Lord has spoken'”\u00a0(Isaiah 40:3-5).

Christians have traditionally understood this text (which was recited verbatim by John the Baptist) to have been\u00a0fulfilled by the coming of Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

But it also provides a timeless set of guidelines.

What would our nation need to do as we approach our 250th<\/sup> birthday\u00a0to “pave a path” for God to move amongst us?\u00a0The text suggests\u00a0four highway-building imperatives:

First, we must fill up the low places<\/strong>.\u00a0Symbolically, that means filling in the holes or\u00a0gaps that plague our lives.\u00a0Connecting with\u00a0God is not a summer thing, or a holiday thing, or a weekend thing.\u00a0It is an everyday privilege to pursue a walk\u00a0with the One who made us.\u00a0

Second, we must bring down the high places<\/strong>.\u00a0That means checking our pride at the door.\u00a0America is an extraordinary place.\u00a0But we have no grounds for arrogance before the watching world.\u00a0\u00a0

Third, we must straighten the crooked places<\/strong>.\u00a0That begins with the bent and misshapen habits that steal our peace of mind and prompt\u00a0us to hide from ourselves, God, and others.

Fourth, we must smooth out the rough places<\/strong>.\u00a0It’s so easy to become tolerant of a chuckhole.\u00a0We just learn to drive around it.\u00a0But God wants to heal what is broken in this world, beginning with our society’s aching need for true\u00a0justice and spiritual vitality.\u00a0\u00a0

If God wanted to drive into our lives today, would he find an open highway?

Prepare the way for the Lord<\/em>, says the ancient prophet.

That’s an invitation to join our Creator\u00a0on the ultimate summer road trip.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here In the summer of 1919,\u00a0the U.S military \u2013 less than a year after the end of\u00a0World War I \u2013 undertook a major mission. Their goal was to find out if it was possible to drive from one coast of the United States to the other. Thus was born the Motor Transport… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5495,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493\/revisions\/5495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}