SECOND MILE*

Under the Keene Road overpass, he drove his dusty white Taurus. The yellow line on his left stretched endlessly. At mile marker 268, four crop dusters flew into view, their lazy formation zooming to the south. Green fields smelled of spring, even the headless metal torsos holding miles of telephone wires seemed alive.

Marker 269—he saw him. Walking on the shoulder of a humming freeway, his head hunched, something about his gait seemed . . . He wore a faded olive fatigue jacket on a shirtless day and carried a bag that looked older than his coat. As he shrunk in the rear-view mirror at last his mind remembered—Kyle, Kyle!

He swerved off the interstate uncaring of the angry horn of the driver who braked and turned sharply to keep from compressing his rear bumper and headlights into some twisted accordion. Firm brakes fought against agitated pebbles until finally the car stopped. Swiftly he exited and ran towards the curious figure. “Kyle!” he yelled. The young man looked up surprised. “Is it you?”

Kyle dropped his bag, turned and ran the other way. But today the younger man would find no escape. Like a possessed sprinter he chased him until at last his hands grasped him. Bent over they panted. Embracing they wept, the wastrel still wounded but alive. “Why did you run from me?” he asked him. Kyle’s downward gaze gave the answer. In silence he held his arm as they walked back to pick up the bag, to climb in the Ford. As Kyle sat down, he looked across—searching. Somehow he knew. John, the God-fearing man whose daughter he accidentally killed, loved him. He could go home.

Meditation
1 John 4:11,12—Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made complete in us.

Love does not quit despite a thousand pains. It is not defined by favorable circumstances or founded on selfish agendas. Love pursues, persists and patiently waits. It carries no list of wrongs and will not review evil’s score. By unceasing hope, uncommon trust and uncompromising truth it cannot lose. When all else fades love finds the second mile as surely as God found two beams.

Inspiration
To go the second mile means always do your duty, and a great deal more than your duty, in a spirit of loving devotion that does not even know you have done it. If you are a saint the Lord will tax your walking capacity to the limit. The supreme difficulty is to go the second mile with God, because no one understands why you are being such a fool.—Oswald Chambers in So Send I You

*Fictional account