With my wife away attending to her stroke-stricken mother, I’ve been doing the grocery shopping. Me in a grocery store is kind of like a directionally challenged mouse in a maze. Still, there’s one aspect of going shopping that I’ve found therapeutic.

There is a back way from our house to the store. By taking these back streets I avoid traveling a busy four lane highway and find myself driving through quiet, peaceful residential neighborhoods. Rather than worrying about traffic lights and impatient motorists swerving from lane to lane and darting in and out of strip malls and restaurants, I find myself poking along watching children play.

With so much of life today spent in the fast lane, it seems to me that we all need the slow pace of the back roads every now and then. So perhaps the next time you have somewhere to go you’ll opt for the back way instead of the fast way. After all, we may surmise from Scripture that our Savior had a fondness for back roads and quiet places (Matthew 14:23; 20:17; Mark 6:31; 7:24; 9:30; Luke 9:10; John 7:10).