As most of you know, Carolyn and I took a little drive in the country a few weeks ago. My younger son, variously known as Dan, Dano, Lt. Cowden or #3, left for Afghanistan on Ash Wednesday. While Dan Schomer was covering my Ash Wednesday service and John Sharick was covering Carolyn’s, we flew out to say goodbye and to drive his vehicle back to Ohio. The flight went well and we got to spend a few hours with Dano before his departure, but the time soon came (about 6:30 Wednesday morning) for us to head home.
There is a considerable distance between the Pacific Ocean and northeast Ohio. I say that from recent personal experience. We passed the exit for Palm Springs, California. We crossed over the very southern edge of the Rockies. We saw the amazing red rocks of Sedona, Arizona.
We sipped a delicious cup of coffee at the Church Street Café in Albuquerque. I sat on the low adobe wall in bright sunshine. Behind me was the ancient Catholic church of Albuquerque’s Old Town. We crossed into north Texas and had an early supper at El Bracero, a tiny little mom-and-pop Tex-Mex place in Amarillo. It is so flat that you soon get the illusion that if you stood on top of the car you could see the end of the earth.
After a night in Tulsa , we came up thru the edge of the Ozarks and crossed the Mississippi at St. Louis. From there it is mostly farmers’ fields all the way into Ohio. It was a long trip, and I guess Carolyn and I must really be in love, because we were still speaking to each other at the end of it.
On the one hand, it made me think of the immensity of God’s creation. We were driving on and on (and on and on), but still only covering a few thousand miles, while my son was flying from California to Maine to Germany and eventually on to Afghanistan, halfway around the world.
At the same time, it was hard to miss the details and intricacies of that same creation – the infinite variety of shapes that a saguaro or cholla cactus can take or the jerking path that a piece of tumbleweed will travel over the barren ground. It helped to remind me that God is the God of the large and the small. God could be seen in the Milky Way that lit the sky at night and heard in the sound of geese traveling north over our heads.
Rusty
Rev. Rusty Cowden
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF WARREN 256 Mahoning Ave., NW | Warren, OH 44483 | (phone) 330-393-1524 | (fax) 330-393-1526 | (e-mail) fpcwarren@hotmail.com
