Journey

1. Remembering a journey.

One summer over two decades ago, I journeyed to the summit of Mount Whitney. It’s 14,505 feet above sea level. As I climbed I exhaled all of my strength into the thin air. The long last effort to the summit was painful. It was hard to keep going. I wanted to quit.

My face was a mask of agony. Except that a mask conceals what is beneath it. But the mask of agony that I wore exactly showed what I felt in every square inch of my body and psyche.

Then I got to the top. It was a joy to be there. I felt grand and happy.

On the journey down from the summit, I met people going up with faces that were, like mine before, masks of agony. That was everybody that I met.

I said what I could to encourage them. I wanted them to succeed. I wanted them to know that the joy of the destination made the agony of the journey completely worthwhile.

2. Journeys of the Bible.

The Bible is a book of journeys.

Adam and Eve journey from Eden to exile with a cherubim with a flaming sword behind them barring the way to the tree of life. The patriarch Abraham journeys from his home to the wilderness to make a pact with God. His grandson Jacob flees from his other grandson, angry Esau. Jacob flees rather than stay to be cut down. After many years, he journeys back to a joyful reunion with Esau. Along the way, he wrestles with God.

He and his children journey to Egypt to escape a famine. His son Joseph journeys there first, sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. The rest of the family follows after.

After four hundred years, Moses murders an Egyptian and flees to Midian. Then God reveals himself to Moses in a bush that burns but is not consumed. Moses journeys back to Egypt to lead his enslaved people out of Egypt.

The children of Israel journey in the Sinai for forty years. When it's time for that wandering to end, God stops the waters of the Jordan River, and they cross over dry river-bottom into their inheritance.

The Israelites stay in one place for hundreds of years. In that time, they fall away from God. Then the Israelites go on a new journey – into exile and captivity. After seven decades, a remnant journeys back to the land of their ancestors.

Jesus was itinerant. His story begins with his mother Mary, with child by the Holy Spirit, journeying to visit her elderly kinswoman Elizabeth, who is pregnant with the child who will become John the Baptist. Jesus is born after his parents journey to Bethlehem. The spirit of God tells Jesus’s earthly father Joseph to take his family and flee to Egypt. After the death of King Herod, they journey from Egypt to Nazareth.

Jesus in his time of ministry does not stay in one place. He journeys from city to city, from town to town, and into the wilderness. He journeys to Jerusalem to die.

Mary Magdalene journeys to Jesus’s tombs with spices to make fragrant his corpse. There Jesus, risen from the dead, greets her. He tells her to go and tell the others. A number of disciples journey to see the empty tomb.

The Book of Acts is a book of journeys. It largely chronicles the journeys of Paul to spread the good news of Christianity. It ends with Paul’s journey to Rome, where by tradition his journey ends in martyrdom.

3. The journey to the golden city.

Some Christians believe that heaven comes to them. But Christianity is a journey, a journey like the journeys described in the Bible. It’s a journey to God.

It’s a journey that begins with the decision to make the journey.

On the journey, most pilgrims meet up with other people also making the journey. Such a caravan of pilgrims is called a church.

On the journey, the pilgrim gains skills for the journey. The pilgrim learns about the journeys of others by reading the Bible and in other ways. The pilgrim learns things useful for his or her own journey.

On the journey, the pilgrim learns to pray. Prayer enlists the help of God in the journey; it can help others, too. It may lead to the pilgrim being consciously guided on the journey by God.

Some pilgrims end their journeys too soon. Some stop believing in the heavenly city that lies at the end of the journey. Some think that the journey is a waste of time – they think that God will be along for them with no effort of their own. And that might or might not be true, but that doesn’t mean that God wants his pilgrims to stop advancing on heaven. (But there are seasons of rest.)

Some of us journey in the wrong direction. Some of us journey in circles. Some of us give up or get distracted or grow complacent. I have known giving up.

When we finally give up the ghost, if God finds us along the way where he wants us to be, that is an act of his grace – grace in guidance, grace in strength, grace in faith, and just plain grace.

For each of us, our life, if it is lived well, is lived in movement. That journey might at times be uphill and hard. Mine has been. Life has been like that for many of my friends. But there’s joy at the summit.