Where the Sidewalk Ends

I’m pretty sure that, within the past few years, the town where I live has passed some sort of ordinance mandating that all new buildings constructed within town limits must include a sidewalk along the perimeter of their property. I’m assuming this because I’ve begun noticing spans of sidewalk in front of new homes and buildings even when those stretches don’t connect to any others. They look a little weird, really, these random bits of walkways that lead nowhere.

I’m guessing the sidewalk ordinance is part of a plan to help our town be more accessible by foot, more “walk-able”, and I applaud the effort. It must require some very forward thinking council members to put such a plan into motion. Think about it, the people who got the sidewalk ball rolling will, most likely, not live long enough to really appreciate it’s benefits. Decades will pass before, section by section, all of the pieces connect allowing pedestrians walk around town without ever running out of sidewalk.

It’s kind of like parenting, isn’t it? As moms and dads we are constantly, often tediously, paving the way for our children’s futures. We do so knowing that many years will pass before we see the outcome of our work. It’s often not until our children have children of their own before we can sit back and congratulate ourselves on a parenting job well done. And, some of us may never have the opportunity this side of heaven to see the work we began in our children completed. That’s tough to think about.

But we do have assurance that the work we are doing today will eventually come to fruition. Consider this nugget of parenting wisdom from Proverbs 22:6, “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.” I love this verse because it reminds us that the often thankless task of laying the groundwork for our children that we do today, will eventually be rewarded. Those random stretches of sidewalk we lay each day will, someday, all connect.