What road are you on, and who is walking with you? There is a lot of spiritual imagery involving roads in the Bible. John the Baptist's commission was given 700 years before, in Isaiah 40:3, was that of road builder:
In the desert prepare
the way for the Lord
make straight in the wilderness
a highway for our God.
or the passage in Jeremiah 31:21-22, quoted from The Message:
Set up signposts to mark your trip home.
Get a good map.
Study the road conditions.
The road out is the road back.
Come back, dear virgin Israel,
come back to your hometowns.
How long will you flit here and there, indecisive? How long before you make up your fickle mind?
God will create a new thing in this land:
A transformed woman will embrace the transforming GOD!
For me, roads represent a journey. Hardships. Struggle. The movie The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington, is an excellent example. But do you know that God walks these roads with us? Zechariah 2:10 says,
"Shout and be glad, O daughter Zion. For I AM COMING, and I WILL LIVE AMONG YOU," declares the LORD.
Interestingly, Deuteronomy 23:12-14 instructs the Hebrews that when they go outside the camp to relieve themselves, that they should dig a hole and bury the excrement, because "GOD, your God strolls through your camp;... Keep your camp holy; don't permit anything indecent or offensive in God's eyes." (Was he saying that He physically walked through the encampment, and didn't want to step in it?) So what does that mean for us today? Do we have indecent stuff in our homes? On our TVs? (On our phones?) Ouch.
But I wonder, do we physically walk and talk with God sometimes, and we don't even know it? The disciples sure did, on the road to Emmaus, recorded in Luke 24. It's a long walk by American standards, seven miles, and they were walking and talking with Jesus the whole way, and didn't even recognize him!
Genesis 3 tells us God physically walked in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, and talked with them in the cool of the day. We know God physically walked with them, because verse 8 notes that they heard the sound of God walking through the garden, and so they hid themselves. God also appeared to Abraham at the Trees of Mamre in Genesis 18, had dinner with him, and then walked down the road to Sodom. While we know that God is Omnipresent- He is everywhere, it seems to me that God is also RIGHT HERE. His very name is Immanuel -- "God With Us." Or put another way, "God-Right-Here."
But the Roads Passage that really moves me is Psalm 84:5-7, quoted from The Message:
And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel;
They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks,
discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain!
God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain,
and at the last turn- Zion! God in full view!
As I read this passage, a couple of scenes from The Chronicles of Narnia books come to mind, by C.S. Lewis. In the book The Horse And His Boy, the hero finds himself on a mountain path, in the dark and fog. He is lonely, and lost, and feeling rather sorry for himself. But a voice in the fog keeps pace with him, and tells him the reality of his life- the whole back story. The voice tells him what was really going on behind the scenes in these moments of painful memory. The fog lifts, and he realizes it is the great lion Aslan, the Christ figure of the books. And he sees that he has been walking a cliff edge in the fog the entire night- the very cliff edge of doom! Yet Aslan has been walking this whole time between him and the the edge to keep him from falling. And the whole time Aslan is explaining that during each and every time of pain that the boy is recalling, Aslan himself was there, working behind the scenes for the boy's good. He just didn't know it.
In my own life, I keep a journal. I write down what is going on, and I pour my heart out to God. I sometimes draw pictures of things God shows me. One day I was stressing over painful things of the past that I didn't understand, and God showed me my journal, with the pages flipping in the wind from an open window. As the pages flipped, I saw paragraphs missing. Sometimes whole pages were missing from the story of my life. God was telling me that I was missing some information. I didn't know the whole story, and that I wouldn't understand until the missing sections were filled in. And I believe someday He WILL fill me in. He will explain to me, like Aslan did to the boy in the fog, how He was working behind the scenes to protect me the whole time, even though I couldn't see it.
And how blessed all those in whom you live,
whose lives become roads you travel;
God was traveling that road with me, protecting me, and someday He'll fill in the missing pages- he will tell me all about it, and I will understand. (And then I'll bawl my head off, odds are!)
They wind though lonesome valleys, come upon brooks...
You know, the death of a loved one is a lonesome valley. And some of us have walked that valley recently. It totally sucks. This verse reminds me of a scene in another of the C.S. Lewis books in The Chronicles of Narnia, called the Silver Chair. It is time for the two children to go home, and they find themselves in Aslan's country. They come upon a quiet brook, and there, under the water, is their old friend King Caspian. He is dead, and his long grey beard is moving gently in the current.
As they are grieving, Aslan appears and tells them to select a large thorn and to prick his paw. As he holds it over the body of the dead king, a great drop of blood falls into the water. As the children watch, aging is reversed and the dead king is transformed before their eyes into the young king they remember from their adventures together, and he steps alive from the stream!
Maybe you are in that lonesome valley right now, grieving. But this valley road is God-traveled, and this grief is not the end.
God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and
at the last turn- Zion! God in full view!
We don't see the whole picture. As we turn corners in our lives, we continue to see new peaks in the distance, and the road continues on. But someday, we will round what REALLY IS the final bend in the road and we will be met with an overwhelming sight. Zion! God in full view!
People talk about going to heaven as "going to our eternal reward." and that's true enough. But that's not really the reward part. The reward part, is that GOD IS THERE. That's the reward. "God in full view!"
If you are grieving right now, and want someone to talk to, you have my ear. Just message me.
May God travel your road today.
photo by Josephine, on www.brokenlightcollective.com https://brokenlightcollective.com/.../08/23/the-lonely-road/
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