July 16, 2001
CYBERCOLUMN:
Glory and reality
___By John Duncan
___I am sitting here under the old oak tree imagining that I am in the cycling profession. I see myself flying through village roads in the French Alps, racing at 70 miles per hour down mountain roads while the rain and wind kiss my face, peddling furiously like Lance Armstrong toward the finish line in the Tour de France in Paris, France. I grab the maillot jaune, the infamous yellow jersey, as I bask in the glory of victory under the Arch ofTriumph on the roadway known as the Champs-Elysees.
JOHN DUNCAN
___Suddenly, my senses come to me as I recall a July Sunday afternoon two summers ago, when I experienced cycling inspiration only to realize that I was only a bicycle novice.
___Inspiration seized me. I decided to shed a few pounds in 100-degree heat by borrowing my daughter’s bicycle. The purple speedster with silver breaks set me on my course. The spiked pedals greeted my feet with delight as my legs pumped up and down like cylinders on a car engine. I turned left and then quickly right as I gained top speed on a straightaway. The sunshine flashed in my face, and the wind created a gentle breeze for a body pumping and perspiring.
___As I enjoyed my biking cruise, I lost a sense of both time and distance. Oops! A sharp hairpin turn lay ahead. Quickly I steadied the bike, attempting as best I could to slow down with the brakes on the handle bar. However, common sense told me if I tried to slow down too fast I might go sailing into the blue sky. So I slowed down a little, turned and whiz--it was time for a split-second decision. Should I take the sharp turn and stay on the road, risking a wipe out on the asphalt? Or should I move into the gravel beside the road, through some tall weeds at a low spot and then back up on the road? I chose the latter.
___My decision proved, well, not so good. I turned, moved off the road onto the gravel, down an incline and into the weeds, and smack dab into a culvert hidden beneath the weeds.
___What happened next seemed like what Walt Whitman in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," once called "dark patches": "Is it not upon you alone the dark patches fall, / The dark threw its patches down upon me also, / The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious, / My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?"
___The front wheel stuck in the ditch, stopped dead, fixed firmly in the mud, not moving, not spinning, not fulfilling its ordained function. The bike, though, that is another story. It continued as best it could to thrust forward.
___If I were an astronaut on the space shuttle, or maybe a pilot of an airplane, ejection in a moment of crisis is one way to describe this momentary dark patch. The bike flipped, I entered orbit for a brief second, no longer labored with thoughts of Lance Armstrong and the "maillot jaune," but hoping for survival, for life, and wondering if life after death and meeting Jesus soon to kiss him on the cheek at heaven’s gate would be my final call.
___Instantly I landed on my head--with no helmet, of course. Thankfully, I landed on my head, the hardest part of my body. The blow gave me a sore neck but no more. I stood on my feet and looked around to make sure no one was watching. I shook the cobwebs out of my dazed cranium. I recovered, picked up the bike with a bent front wheel, and then slowly climbed out of the tall weeds. A car drove by, and I waved, acting like life was normal.
___I think, somehow, Jesus spoke: Think not great thoughts for yourself. Keep your goal focused on the narrow road. Watch out for curves, for dark patches that fall, and confess that your greatest thoughts are meager. And, open your eyes to see what’s ahead. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light (Matthew 6:22).
___John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines.
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