"Heritage........................"

My twenty-year-old grandson was granted permission yesterday to drive the expressway down to the Lexington Mall, a distance of a hundred miles or so and his first “long distance journey” away from home. The sole reason for his request was to “pursue” a friendship established with a girl from Virginia, her church having attended our annual Youth Conference and her group now planning to stop and shop for a few hours before their return. If Cody, his brother, his cousin, and two other boys left here with mom and dad’s blessing, though, it is also true that their departure gave me and their grandmother some concern. The immediate area around their destination is at all times an enormous snarl of traffic, five lanes in either direction bumper to bumper out front and the parking lot itself not much better. Thank God for cell-phones and grandchildren raised to respect the hearts of their elders. Text messages kept us aware of their safety and, truthfully, the whole event took me back some fifty-two years to a trip I made with another fellow, both of us older teenagers and motoring to Paducah for much the same purpose. We took the ladies bowling when we got there, had dinner with their parents, and came back the next day. Where we stayed overnight is beyond my memory (so are the names and the faces of the girls, for that matter); but what is till fresh to me is the feeling of somehow reaching a milestone, a liberty granted me that somehow spoke of “no longer being just a kid”. Surely God’s hand was on us when we returned, me falling asleep at the wheel on old Route 25, no more than twenty minutes from the house, the driver’s window down a bit and the roar of the approaching semi so loud that it awakened me no more than a hair before impact. I’d like to believe that it was, anyhow. What I’m positive about, however, is that, whatever life brings to us, we can trust in His love, His wisdom, His concern; and what I’m thankful for is daughters who have raised their children in Him……