There are worse duties than needing to drive a two-hundred-and-forty mile loop through northeast Kansas on a beautiful spring day. That was the way I spent my day last Wednesday. With the temperature climbing toward eighty degrees, I drove past Hiawatha and turned south on US-75.

On the road banks and in the fields, the growing green of fescue heralded spring. The first, faint cast of coming leaves showed on the fringe of trees on the hills and along the streams. Straight flumes of smoke and steam rising from the stacks at the power center north of St. Mary’s testified to the stillness of the day.

From several miles away, I saw the smoke of the grass fire rising into the air a few miles east of Wamego. As I drove toward it from the side of the sun, it reflected white, hovering, gleaming in the sky. I drove on past it, continuing west to our branch campus at Wamego. As I turned into the parking lot, I looked back toward the east, saw the same smoke from a different view.

Its upper part had flattened into a mushroom shape. Though its edges still held white from the piercing of the sun, the rest was darker, shadowed. There was somehow the hint of menace in these darker tones.

In a world where even steam casts a shadow, there is nothing that does not hold some threat when it stands between us and the Son. It is always better to stand with him, even when we must walk through the fire in order to see beyond the smoke.

H. Arnett
4/5/10