My family is on an epic adventure. We drove to Orlando and then to Washington, DC. Yes. Drove. My wife, Taryn, and our eight kids, in our modified Ford Transit van (it has a lift for our son, Oliver, who is in a wheelchair).

I’m certain the kids will refer to this trip for years to come. My sermons might, too.

The kids were equipped with automobile bingo cards. On the first day, I asked if any of them had “tornado” on their card as we narrowly avoided a devastating storm in Tomah, Wisconsin.

Calmer, but hotter weather, greeted us the rest of the trip as we would yell out each state line that we crossed. We’ve been to almost as many places as a Johnny Cash song. Man, we’ve been everywhere.

Taryn and I enjoyed sitting in the front, trying to ignore the frequent “are we there, yet?” requests. We observed fields of majestic windmills in Illinois and Taryn pointed out to me crops of no till farming, a practice that avoids soil erosion.

Effingham, IL has the 2^nd largest cross in the United States. It’s 198 feet tall and made from 180 tons of steel. You can’t miss it. In fact, they intentionally made it 2 feet below FAA requirements so they didn’t need to put a beacon on top for airplanes.

Then, there were the billboards. Invitations to future stops along the way.

Florida had one sign that advertised “Gator heads for sale” and another invitation that was “Fun for the whole family, Machine Gun America”. Also Florida. 

We visited our fair share of roadside rest-stops, many offering clean bathrooms on their sign, but few of them able to deliver on their promise.

The top three themes, unofficially, of billboards from Georgia to Florida were about abortion, Jesus, and of course… adult stores. Many of those signs were in a row, perhaps trying to outdo the virtue-signaling of the other.

A sign in South Carolina was blunt: bright red letters on a yellow background was the word “REPENT.”

There were plenty of signs and symbols of Christianity from Saint Paul to Saint Augustine. Some messages were encouraging and positive. Others focused on shame, guilt, and fear.

We arrived in Washington, DC on the day that the Supreme Court’s latest decision reversing Roe v Wade was announced.

We tried to drive by the Supreme Court building to get a closer look and see if there were people there (and glimpse at the variety of signs in support or protest of the ruling). As we got near the premises, we heard a traffic cop yelling at us.

We stopped as he walked up to our van.

“You can’t go here,” he said. “Didn’t you see the sign, no trucks?!”

He peered in and saw our son, Oliver, in his wheelchair with his equipment and realized we weren’t a delivery vehicle. Just tourists.

“We’re just sight-seeing,” we told him. We hadn’t seen the signs and, when he pointed them out, it was a “No semi’s” sign—we wouldn’t have expected that to refer to us.

“I know it’s a bit of a grey area,” he said. “But you can’t go around the Capital in this vehicle. Please make a U-turn and go back.”

Perhaps the traffic cop’s statement is more telling of the societal challenges facing us at large.

We’re all entering a grey area.

Most signs I saw throughout the trip described Christianity in black and white.

You can justify your faith on both sides of the abortion issue. More than likely, you can see the grey areas and the challenges ahead. What’s next? What is coming down the road?

There will be consequences. Women will face challenges to make safe decisions with their reproductive health. Will states shift to different rules each election depending on the party in control?  

Will our society be pro-life after birth? Will we provide better education, treat single mothers with compassion and resources, and add substance to our theological arguments in how we treat the stranger?

If not, billboards telling others to follow Jesus will ring hollow if our neighbors don’t see Christ behind the words and actions of Christians.

Pastor John wrote this article for the June 30^th, 2022 issue of the Forest Lake Times