In 2008, cancer crept into our family when no one was looking. Our family was thrown into a bit of a turmoil until we could find a way out of a very dark place. After some treatment and some healing, our youngest son (only age 10 at the time) wanted to raise money to help find a “cure” for lymphoma (and other blood cancers). The Scenic Shore 150 is one of Wisconsin’s most popular bike rides and is the largest locally organized and supported event for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. The sandy shoreline of Lake Michigan is the gorgeous setting for a weekend of riding in support of a cure for blood cancer.
I was serving on the pastoral team of a congregation in Valparaiso, IN, and we had enough interest in our congregation to build a bicycling team to help raise money to find a cure. Our team committed to ride bicycles in July, 2008, in the Scenic Shore 150, a two-day 150-mile cycling event.
Our church bicycling team was named the “Still Speaking Cycling Team,” as this was the moment in time when the national United Church of Christ had launched a re-branding and marketing campaign called, “God is Still Speaking.” Intensive training began for our team and we all set out to raise money for every mile that our team would ride in Wisconsin.
On Saturday: our team would pedal 75 miles north from Mequon to Manitowac and then spend the night in Manitowac. On Sunday: our team would pedal the final 75 miles toward Door Country, ending in Sturgeon Bay. My job in Wisconsin was to drive our van the 150 miles to pick up tired, overheated, or sick bicyclists who could no longer “Still Cycle” along the route. I became lost driving the van.
July 19-20, 2008, was probably the most humid and the steamiest Wisconsin summer of the century. When one of our bicyclists called me on my cell phone and asked me to come back and pick up one tired, tuckered out bicyclist on our team, I asked “Where are you?” I was given a location. This was in 2008, before G.P.S. was commonplace. I was given an address – an intersection of two streets in some small town on the shore of Lake Michigan. All I had was an intersection and a hand-drawn map of the bicycle route.
“Okay. Stay there. I shall turn this van around and come to the rescue!” I tried to re-trace the miles that I had driven. Going by memory, I tried to back-track to find our cyclist (sporting the distinctive black and red jersey with the “Still Speaking” comma logo on the front of it) at some random intersection of two streets in some town in Wisconsin.
But I became hopelessly lost somewhere out in the cornfields. It dawned on me that these lush, green cornfields seemed quite far away from the “scenic shore” of the blue water of Lake Michigan. I had directions and a map. Why was it that I could not find our tuckered-out team?
I did not save the day that day. Some other support vehicle, authorized by the Scenic Shore 150 event, picked up our disabled bicyclist and transported him to safety. It was not until that evening as we were recovering with other bicyclists that we came to understand what had happened. All of this occurred on DAY ONE of our journey and I was looking at the map for DAY TWO. There is no way that I could ever find our disabled bicyclist because I was using the wrong map.
During this Covid-19 pandemic, we may very well feel lost. Beyond FEELING lost, perhaps some of us really ARE lost. Where are we? Where are we going? Can we ever find our way through this darkness? Who will come to rescue us? Do we have a team support vehicle? What if our support vehicle cannot find us in this strange and foreign place?
The comfort of the Christian tradition is that God always knows where we are. God never needs a map to find us. God is always on the right page. There is one who is coming to save us, pick us up, and bring us home.
marketing campaign, ‘Still Speaking 2.0.’ Many of the social media ads missed the mark, this one perhaps most of all: