My then wife and I went to Wisconsin some years back to attend a Youth Specialties seminar, but since it was also our anniversary we each took off that Thursday and Friday and made a mini-vacation out of it. We’d left our house very early Thursday morning and stopped for lunch at a little place about a half-hour north of Milwaukee. The name of the place was ‘Bublitz’s Family Restaurant”, and let me tell you, the owners and the employees that we had contact with definitely had that ‘northern’ twang in their voice.

From there, we headed on up to Oshkosh and went through the Experimental Aircraft Association air museum. And again several of the people there had that ‘Wisconsin’ sound in their speech. But even though we were just an hour farther north than where we had eaten, the sound of their speech was just a little different. On Friday we went to the Milwaukee Zoo, and Saturday was the seminar, held at a big Lutheran church just some blocks north of the zoo. Here, generally, the locals’ accents weren’t quite as pronounced. (Due to my vast experience in such things, I attributed this to the people in the city being more exposed to outside influences by being more connected to the global economy… there are more people from other parts of the country and/or world who move to, work in, or do business with the metropolis.) But there were youth leaders attending the seminar from all over Wisconsin, and one could hear a number of slightly different ways of saying the same thing.

When I first decided to climb up in a ‘big truck’ some years ago and went to work for a local trucking firm, I went to plants all over Illinois and Iowa, was in Wisconsin and Indiana, and pretty well covered the southern states…Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, as well as Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas. And the accents I encountered were many and varied. Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois all have that midwestern sound, but if one really paid attention you could notice subtle differences all along the way. In Dodge City, Kansas, you start to hear a little of the west. The Georgia peach behind the desk south of Atlanta, and the little strawberry blonde doing the paperwork in Enterprise, Alabama both had the sweetest little southern accents you might like, while people in central Arkansas sounded more like Bill Clinton. But the most pronounced accent of any I heard was in the offices of the little cotton plant I went to in the boot heel of Missouri! I had to really pay attention to what was being said or I would just get lost and have to ask them to please repeat themselves…several times!

Before Columbus touched the shores in this hemisphere, each tribe… indeed, each people… had their own language. And I’m sure that even then there were local derivatives. And since the landing of the Pilgrims, the King’s English has been corrupted with such fervor that we now sometimes even have trouble understanding the King’s English! It would seem that wherever you go in this great country of ours, the words we hear are going to sound a bit different. And when you add to that mix all of the people from other countries who come to this country and add their own accents—the range of sounds that one can hear speaking the same words is just amazing! And we’ve only talked about language! There are many other differences that one can notice as you move across the country.

At a truck stop in Mississippi I ordered iced tea with my meal like always, and when it arrived, promptly tore open two packets of sweetener and put in it. Big mistake! Tea is served sweet in that part of the country. A place in Madison, WI, served kielbasas and brats made with a variety of cheeses in them. The point is that all of us are different in one way or another. Some of those differences are due to our family heritage, some to the area where we grew up, and some are learned from the culture and society that surrounds us at any given time.

Sometimes there can even be extreme differences concerning the same topic all in the same town. How many churches are in just your town? And why? A Pastor told me recently of planning a special service for Easter one year and trying to get all of the churches in his area to take part. Out of the 7-or-8 churches, only 3-or-4 agreed to participate. It seems that some of their philosophies prohibited them from associating with anyone else!

In the book of John, Chapter 14 to be exact, Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” For all of our diversities… for all of our differences…for all of our independence…for all of our individuality…there is only one way to have eternal life…there is only one way to see heaven and speak with God…there is only one gate. The King James version says, “I am the door,” Jesus is the door…the only door…to heaven. It doesn’t matter if you serve sweet tea with a southern accent, ride a bronco and talk like a Texan, or pull a plow through the soil of central Illinois and talk like ‘normal’ people. It doesn’t matter if you say ‘Hail, Mary’, recite the Lord’s Prayer, or shout ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Amen’. Jesus is our salvation…Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus is our Savior and our Lord. Jesus is the only door…the only gate…the only way…to get to Heaven. It doesn’t matter how you say it…you only have to believe it…and accept it!