Road Trip Through The Psalms

Trinity Christian Reformed Church in Jenison, Mich., is in the midst of a summer sermon series that its pastor has dubbed “A Road Trip Through The Psalms.”

The seven-week series highlights a different psalm each Sunday, each corresponding with a Michigan numbered highway on which Rev. Gerry Koning travels with his family. For example, prior to the first sermon in the series on Psalm 25, where the psalmist writes, “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.” Koning traveled on M-25, a state highway that follows the Lake Huron coastline around Michigan’s Thumb region between Port Huron and Bay City.

“King David understood the metaphor of travel very well and often uses it to describe the way of the Lord,” Koning said. “We are pilgrims on a journey.”

In that first message Koning was able to draw an analogy to a detour where a police car directed him off M-25 onto a rural road.

“We all go through detours in our lives and it’s amazing how God uses those detours or puts some of  those detours in our lives (to get our attention),” he said in the message.

In another trip Koning and his wife traveled on Michigan Highway M-77 to the Upper Peninsula community of Grand Marais, visiting the former Coast Guard station which received the last communication of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald before it sank in a November 1975 storm on Lake Superior, killing 29 sailors. He then preached on the corresponding Psalm 77, where the psalmist recalls how God brought the Israelites out of Egypt by parting the Red Sea.

Koning plans to conclude the series later this month by focusing on Psalm 1, which will correspond with his participation in the Dream Cruise, a popular parade of classic cars down Detroit’s Woodward Avenue, which is designated as M-1 on Michigan’s highway system.

Through each message in the series, Koning comes back to a central theme: “God’s way is the best way,” he said.