This summer, my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. My sister Abbie, and I, along with our spouses and children, traveled to Columbus for the celebration. Everything about the weekend was joyful and good. On Saturday night we enjoyed a meal together with all the family. Afterward, we gathered at the house and played a video for my parents of good wishes from many of their friends. On Sunday, I had the privilege of teaching my dad's Sunday school class; then, we packed a pew for Sunday worship. After church, we took lots of family pictures. Every moment of the weekend was joy-filled.

During the weekend I looked at my parents' wedding photos. In the pictures, they are young, fresh-faced, and smiling. Though it is hard to think of your parents as being other than how you have known them, I know enough to know that the young couple in the photos had no clue what the years ahead would bring. In the photos, they are all smiles and youthful glee. Their faces show no signs of worry, and their smiles look genuinely carefree. There is one particular photo that captured my attention. It was the photo of the moment my parents emerged from the church to leave for their honeymoon. All the wedding guests had lined up beside the door to wish them well as they ran to the car. It was the tradition then to throw rice at departing couples, but because my dad worked for a peanut company, the guests through peanuts. The photo captures the moment of glee just after the covenant making and before the covenant keeping. Peanuts are in the air. Their smiles seem more part of who they are than momentary expressions as they dodge the flying legumes. They were husband and wife, happy to be united in marriage and excited to begin their life together. The photo perfectly captures that most joyful moment.

We pass them by every day on the roads that we travel without much thought or recognition. Little green signs, with white numbers marking the distance in miles from a starting point, blend into the scenery beside the road. These mile marker signs are part of a very long history that stretches back to the first constructed roads. There still stands today beside the roads that the Romans constructed stones engraved numbers indicating the distance from Rome. These stones are called milestones. With this long history, the word "milestone" has found a place in our lexicon not only referring to an object that indicates the distance from a specific point but also to a moment in time that has significance or distinction.

This past weekend I traveled to Columbus, GA, to celebrate a milestone with my dad, who is also named Ben Smith. On Friday, September 1, 1978, my dad started running. From the start, he recorded his running miles and eventually would add them to an Excel file to keep track of his total distance. I was a little boy when he started running, so I do not remember a time when he was not a runner. I do remember that over the years, I would hear him mention different goals that he was striving for. In the early 1980’s he was training to qualify and then run the Boston Marathon. Years later, as his total distance of running approached the distance in miles equal to the distance around the Earth at the equator (24,901 miles), he regularly made announcements as to how close he was getting. When he reached this milestone, he was running with some of his longtime running partners. They stopped and used a disposable camera to capture the moment then continued their run.