The second installment in our “Summer Pastimes and the Life of Faith” series focuses on travel. There is a LOT of travel in the bible, from Abram and Sarai’s original journey from Ur to Canaan; the people of Israel’s 40-year sojourn in the wilderness (forty years to make a two-week trip…); and the fairly constant traveling done by Jesus and his disciples, and later Paul and the apostles. Travel is where the rubber meets the road in the Christian life.
The life of an apostle (you and me!) is a life on mission, and as Jesus, Paul and others lived it, that was often a life on the road. Travel involves leaving home – and coming home. That is a good description of the life of a Jesus-follower: we are ever called away from the familiar and comfortable to encounters that delight us, challenge us, stretch us, teach us, and often bless us. And while we are moving in and out of these border-crossing encounters, we are also gradually making our way home – not to the homes we live in in this life, but the Home where God-Life is all. Like the heroes of faith listed in Hebrews 11, we should never mistake the homes we dwell in for that ultimate Home which is our long-term destination.
The Christian life, like travel, is often richer when done with others. Relationships spring up naturally when we’re on the move; we might find ourselves talking to, eating with, sight-seeing with people we’d never encounter at home. The same can be said of our life in Christian community: we become close to people we’d never naturally come to know, and share the journey into faith with them.
Comparing travel to our life in Christ, we might think of the Bible as our guidebook. It describes places we have not been, and those descriptions are not the same as being there. And when we do get there, we find our experiences confirmed in reading the witness of those saints who have gone before.
Travel opens us, sometimes in uncomfortable ways and often joyously. So does our life as a follower of Christ. No matter where we are, we have the chance to encounter God on the road. It might be in navigating a challenge, or being kept safe from harm, or praying to be kept safe from harm, or in an encounter with another person, or in a “mountaintop” experience of great beauty and grandeur… God is in all of it, and often quite specifically. Every journey can lead us closer to the One who made us. So… bon voyage!
No comments:
Post a Comment