The Commute

I hate commuting. It's the worst. I love my job and what I do but the sprint to the subway, almost getting pancaked by taxi drivers and then cramming into a packed subway car isn't my ideal way to begin or end a day. I hate commuting so much that I moved within throwing distance to my first workplace. Bliss could only last so long and then I switched jobs across town

Since then I've been forced back into the commute, I've done everything imaginable to shorten or distract myself from the idea that I'm commuting. I blast my tunes on my iPod and try to get lost in thought about something but that never really works. If you seen me at the subway, I'm usually reading a newspaper or pretending to be interested in something I'm really not. I digress.

Anyways, a couple weeks ago at church, Pastor Dave mentioned something about picking up QT books for 4 bucks. My big thing for 2009 has been to move my faith past just Sunday. I'm not a great Christian by any stretch of the imagination but one can try. I decided to take a flyer on the book seeing as it was only 4 bucks. The next problem was how to read this thing EVERY day. This coming from a guy who has a tough time remembering to brush his teeth everyday (Disgusting, right? Don't worry, I keep a toothbrush at the office).

Then one day on my way to work, I forgot my newspaper but noticed I had the QT book in my bag. Now, I've always been one to think that doing QT meant you had to lock your door, sit in a dimly lit room and listen to some medley of Chris Tomlin and Shane Bernard in the background. But on this day, I decided to flip open to the current day's study and began reading. I did my best to follow the story, do the memory verse, think about the application and read the suggested prayer. By the time I closed the book, I was at my stop. It turned out that the exact amount of time it took to do a QT was the exact amount of time it took to get to work. Coincidence? Maybe not.

I think the "quiet" in QT, at least to me, might be a bit of a misnomer. There's nothing quiet about my morning commute; the screeching sound of the subway, the conductor over the intercom, passengers jockeying for prime position. At the same time, it's the quietest part of my day, where my thoughts go interrupted and where I attempt to change the worst part of my day into one of the most meaningful.

Keith Park