After Davy Land, age sixteen, escapes jail to dodge a likely double-manslaughter conviction, his father Jeremiah prays. “Lord, send Davy home to us; or if not, Lord, do this: send us to Davy.” That night, an Airstream trailer appears in the Lands’ driveway. It’s theirs, bequeathed by a old friend. Jeremiah Land laughs. Then, he starts packing.
Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River is a family epic of faith and freedom, outlaws and villains, miracles and dreams. But one particularly salient theme that comes up again and again is the idea of “being led.” After the Airstream shows up, Jeremiah sells off the family’s possessions to amass food for the journey. As our eleven-year-old narrator Reuben Land tells us, he does this before he has any idea of their destination. He says, “faith, as Dad saw it, had delivered unto us the Airstream trailer, and faith would direct our travels.”
When days later a postcard shows up from family friends confirming a Davy sighting, their first stop is set. All the Lands have to do is turn off the lights, lock the doors, and head west. Jeremiah contentedly compares them to the Israelites in the desert, being led by the Lord. But as the cold and tedium of the Minnesota highway sinks in, Reuben becomes less sure of their path. “Once traveling, it’s remarkable how quickly faith erodes. It starts to look like something else - ignorance for example. Same thing happened to the Israelites. Sure, it’s weak, but sometimes you’d just rather have a map.”
And how relatable this is. As a young woman in my twenties, I was called to be a school teacher while pining for a family of my own. God led me to years of uncertain single life, pushing me away from striving for a boyfriend and towards the actual kids in my actual classroom. A map to my husband would have been nice, but after He finally led me to him and finally blessed us with a happy, healthy, adventurous son, He led us to long years of secondary infertility. We struggled for years with what to do with the dreams of the family we wanted, and God was leading us elsewhere, to trusting that He could do more good with our little family than with whatever our ideas for it were. And when I felt the pull to quit a job where I was supporting people who needed it, to spend more time with my son, maybe the only child I’d have, He led me to take advantage of a flexible work schedule and then firmly shut the door on my quitting altogether by taking my husband’s job away. Twice.
These are small crosses of uncertainty amidst a life of love and blessings, and I share them to acknowledge that being led in faith, one step at a time, without a map, is hard. While we mostly see Jeremiah acquiesce to God’s plan with a resigned smile, we also see him physically wrestle with the Lord over next steps, tearing his clothes and yelling, “Make me willing if you can.” How easy, too, to see ourselves in Reuben Land, knowing the path God is leading us towards (in Reuben’s case, taking the authorities to his criminal brother) and turning away from it instead. My decisions haven’t led to a good man being mangled by his own ill-fated horse, but I’ve felt and seen the consequences of my stepping in the wrong direction. And like Reuben, I continue to learn the hard way that God will lead me to the right path in the end anyway, so I might as well get there quickly and eliminate the damage my own attempts at control can cause.
And so what are we to do when we’re in the midst of uncertainty, and all we want is a map? When we begin to doubt the call God gave us in the first place and start to look for a different next step? Jeremiah Land would likely wake up in the morning, pray with his Bible, and then throw himself into the duties of the day and offer up whatever hospitality he had on hand to whomever crossed his path. The actual prophet Jeremiah would have us settle into whatever territory we found ourselves in as well, to “build houses and live in them. Plant gardens and eat of their fruit.” So maybe that’s the action today: dig into the current call. Stop worrying about the next step, and just love the people in front of us where we are, throw ourselves at the current duties we’re being called to where we are. After all, as Peace Like a River reminds us, when God wants us to move, He’ll provide the Airstream.