This Little Inch Worm

By definition, inch worms don't travel the world. They move one inch at a time. They seem to be a bit like the tortoise, slow and steady. But, unlike the tortoise, one little inch worm hitched a ride on my windshield.

He was in the very center, so even if I had pulled over, I wouldn't have been able to reach him. Poor little inch worm, I thought. He'll fly off into the traffic behind me.

I was wrong. He did not fly away. He hunkered down, pressed down by wind and inertia.

I couldn't help seeing my own life in microcosm. Pressed down by life, my face squished to the windshield, begging only for this ride to stop! Let me off this tilt-a-whirl and put me on the swings.

Then I parked the car. He was still there, my little inch worm. Ten miles from where he started.

That, too, is my life in microcosm. When life presses me down, God tells me to hang on, and that very thing that squishes my cheek is the vehicle that takes me ten miles down the spiritual road. A place I would never have arrived at using my own power. But God uses those pressures to take us to a place, as C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle, "farther up and farther in."

Hang on, little inch worm; you're going places.

*Note, that's not my hand. :)