For Mother’s Day we did one of the things that Cindy loves most. We worked a puzzle. The puzzle we selected was of all the National Parks. In the center of the picture was a map of the US with a star on the location of each of the parks. I wonder, “Who in America lived the furthest from a National Park?” I looked at the large white strip through the middle of the country where no stars existed. A line could be traced from Chicago down though Iowa to Kansas and the to the Panhandle and finally to Houston. The area marked by the blue zone on the map defined the boundaries of the park-less valley. Its deepest spot, the area surrounding Des Moines, Iowa. These people live the furthest from anything our country deemed important enough to reserve for everyone.
It’s not that they live in an ugly place, they just don’t have anything unique and remarkable near them. They have vast acres of farmland. You can see both horizons. Trees dot the landscape, but mostly just acre after acre of farmland. The same could be said for Kansas. Then there is the Gulf of Mexico. Not till you near Florida is there any sign of a National Park and it is so remote, on the very southern tip of the state.
I loved this map. When I asked the question about who lived the furthest I just typed the question into google and the first search request was for a group of cartographers on Reddit that have discussed this question. A person identified by the online handle ‘dmahr” who drew the map commented, “I just did it in ArcMap 10 using the Euclidean Distance tool in Spatial Analyst with North American Equidistant Conic projection (NAD83 datum).” I think dmahr must be smart. He knows a bunch I don’t know. My eyes guessed at what he proved.
I would need to learn a lot more to fully participate in a conversation with him. I go the gist of what he said, but not all of it. This is a lot like the Bible. You can study it and learn so much by just observing and reading it. Occasionally, it takes digging, discipline and determination to work through the text to get more of the meaning. Too often people are unwilling to pay the price of being a student of the Word. They just want the easy pickings, but there is treasure untold in a discipled examination of the Bible. Ask it questions. Seek its answers.