Tracks

I often find myself taking paths for granted.  When I close my mind I think of the smooth, wide, sidewalks of New York’s 5th Avenue.  I imagine city streets taking on the texture and feel of a recently paved racetrack.  Even when the path/track/road isn’t, I act as if it is.
 
Last night I almost walked into a pit.  It was as if I was racing along New York’s East Side Highway late at night in a rain storm.  In both cases I am walking on cruise.  My mind has left, there is just enough in the present to see.  Details, even concrete barriers to my left and right and the emergency tape right in front of me, disappear.  I don’t see them.  I cannot anticipate them.  I haven’t even considered their existence.  I was on the verge of stepping in when feel of the tape triggered my wake-up alarm. 
 
Metaphorically I was back in the old car, cruising up New York east side.  I was almost home.  I desperately wanted to sleep.  I had no interest in what was ahead of me.  In the rain, late at night in the darkness, unaware, I rushed on.  It was in this state that I missed the warning and discovered the meaning of a New York category-3 pothole!
 
New York’s potholes have categories.  When I hit mind the definitions went along these lines.  Level-1 is at least 12 inches across and 4-6 inches deep.  Level-2 is 18 inches across and 6-12 inches deep.  Level-3 is 18 inches across and 12+ inches. 
 
At sixty plus miles an hour a category-3 hit is devastating.  Thank God I didn’t lose a wheel, blow a tire, or find myself launched into the East River.
 
Life is tough.  Even smooth tracks rarely are.  It is hard to stay alert.  I can only imagine, and find myself longing for a new set of tracks.  God tell me its coming.  “No lions on this road, no dangerous wild animals—nothing and no one dangerous or threatening.  Only the redeemed will walk on it.”  (Isaiah 35.9)