This month the Sunday School is taking up the topic of “journey.”
Long ago, when I was five, my family took a three-week trip out west: my parents, my two older brothers, the family dog, and me traveling in the Ford Edsel station wagon. We saw all kinds of wonders: Yellowstone National Park, the Rocky Mountains, and the Grand Canyon. We rented a cabin on a lake in Montana, where my dad and brothers went fly fishing and I played on the dock. (Mom, I am sure, read a book. The dog joined the fishermen in the boat, because that is a dog’s job.)
A few days after leaving the lake, we picked up a newspaper and discovered an enormous earthquake had struck Yellowstone Park, sending huge shock waves through many western states. The lake where we had stayed was affected; the cabin we had occupied just a couple of days earlier was now underwater. The woman who owned the cabins had walked for miles and miles with her dog to get help.
Well, I was little, don’t forget. When we returned home from all that excitement, one of the neighbors asked me, “Where did you go, Sylvia?” In full honesty and sincerity, I answered, “I went in the back seat.”
You never know what will happen when you set out on a journey. You don’t know what you will encounter or what you narrowly miss. Sometimes you don’t even have a full understanding or appreciation of where you have been. All you know is that you are going.
Even the best laid plans can go awry. You think you’re headed one way, and an earthquake can strike your life, sending you off in a completely different direction. Sometimes you have to walk for miles, figuratively (sometimes even literally!), before you tread on firm ground again.
That’s true whether you are journeying to a physical destination or setting out to explore the inner regions of heart and soul. All kinds of surprises may await. Some may be joyous and serendipitous. Others may be tragic and painful. Chances are your journeys through life will contain a mixture of welcome and awful surprises. You just never know. Isn’t that life in a nutshell?
Regardless of our journeys, I think one thing our church can offer is a community of people who will, in a figurative sense, “walk with” us as we go through life. Arms to hold us when we’re bereft. Ears to listen when we’re confused. Truth-telling to let us know when we are about to walk into a wall. Laughter and smiles to offer us when fortune favors us. We can offer that to one another.
One of my favorite poems of comfort is by Rami Shapiro:
Unending Love
We are loved by an unending love.
We are embraced by arms that find us
even when we are hidden from ourselves.
We are touched by fingers that soothe us
even when we are too proud for soothing.
We are counseled by voices that guide us
even when we are too embittered to hear.
We are loved by an unending love.
We are supported by hands that uplift us
even in the midst of a fall.
We are urged on by eyes that meet us
even when we are too weak for meeting.
We are loved by an unending love.
Embraced, touched, soothed, and counseled,
Ours are the arms, the fingers, the voices;
Ours are the hands, the eyes, the smiles;
We are loved by an unending love.
As we carry out our individual journeys, may all of us feel the comfort of unending love. May we be there for one another when we most need love’s embrace.
Love,
Sylvia