Gravel

Greenwood Street was unpaved when I lived on it. Since it was in the city limits, the city was responsible for maintaining it. This amounted to running a road grader over it once a year, and respreading the gravel over it evenly. Of course, this need to be done to keep deep ruts from forming in the roadbed, and to eliminate pot holes.

For me on my bike, this was always a difficult time, because riding a bicycle on a street with gravel ranging in size from peas to baseballs can be a real challenge, I never looked forward to the visit of the road grader. However, after a week or so, car traffice would push the larger stones to the side or the middle, forming smoother tracks that would were better for biking, and all was well in the universe again.

Sometimes God runs a road grader through our lives, disrupting the routine, making it hard for us to ride our bikes the way we're used to. But those disruptions can keep the tracks from becoming ruts.