Train Tracks

There is a park just down the road from us that feels like a little bit of home to me here in Lynchburg. It is one of the very first places we explored when we first moved here. For some reason that makes it feel familiar. I love walking there, strolling over the hills and feeling the wind in my hair.

My favorite place in the park is where a huge train track bridge juts out over the river hundreds of feet below. It looks to big and powerful looming over the rushing water beneath.

When I take a walk in the park, I always go to that spot hoping, wishing, waiting that the powerful engine will come charging across...it never happens.

One day I was taking a walk and I heard the whistling of the train in the distance! I raced to the spot where I could see the bridge, sat down and waited. The air was full of the sheer power of the train, the tons and tons of metal grinding over the track. It was so loud that it filled the whole valley, it made me shiver. I waited and I watched.

I sat in that place, my eyes glued on the bridge until I realized that instead of getting louder still, and closer, the sheer whistles and mighty roar where slowly getting quiet. I sat there until it was a small hum in the distance.

The train must have taken another path, there must have been another track in the valley near the river, I missed it.

I sat there disappointed, I had so hoped to see the powerful show. But as I sat there I realized the lesson I had learned. And during a time of change for not only me, but many of those I love as well, I realized what a timely lesson it was.


Even though the train did not come roaring across the bridge as I had expected, I could not deny the untamable power of that engine as it's metal wheels clanked down the track. The sheer power made the whole valley hum, I could not see, but I could feel it, I knew it was there.

How often is God like that in our lives. We have a track mapped out for how we think He will guide and intervene. We sit, wait and watch until He comes across the bridge just like we thought He would. But so often He takes a different way. We can't see Him, but we feel Him, we feel His power and we know that He is there. He is just roaring across a track that we did not know existed. He is cutting new paths through the mountain and new tracks by the river. But His presence is undeniable. It gives us shivers as we feel His power, it gives us hope, because we know that He is near.

You can't see Him, but you feel Him, you trust, know and believe that He is near.