Life is Like a Four-lane Highway

It Goes On and On

When I was a boy, my mother sang an old folk hymn, entitled "Life is Like a Mountain Railroad." Well, I think it's a lot more like a four-lane highway. On a railroad, you go where the tracks take you. Your only choices are starting and stopping. Besides a train on a mountain railroad is awfully slow. It just doesn't measure up to today's fast pace.

Most of the time we whiz right along on a four-lane highway. We have lots of choices as to where and when we want to get off it. We pick our destination and in no time at all we are there. Notice, I said most of the time. But just as in life, it doesn't always work that way. We sometimes don't follow the rules, and guess what: There's a police siren behind us. We have to pay the price for our misdeeds. Sometimes our misdeeds cause collisions, injury, and even death. Our sins can cause pain for us and for others.

However, accidents happen. We can't blame everything that goes wrong on ourselves, others, or even on God. Life is not perfect. Sometimes things just go wrong. In life, we get ill, and sometimes there is no apparent reason. Don't blame God for it. Our lives will end sometime. That's just the way it is. Without death there is no life. The cycle of existence rolls on with or without us. In the book Ecclesiastes in the bible, the preacher said, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."

Then what purpose does life hold for us? Well, why do we drive on a four-lane highway? We have some goal or destination in mind. The highway provides access to that goal. The highway is not an end in itself. We each exist in this world for some purpose. Our lives are not ends in themselves. It behooves us to find out what that purpose is, and take a direction in life that leads to that destination. We have to put up with detours and construction delays and even accidents, but we must press on.

This is not a perfect analogy, but I really believe that "Life is Like a Four-Lane Highway." Happy Motoring!