This Long Road Home

Each of us remains in process, on This Long Road Home, eventually finding our satisfaction and peace in the rest that time brings. Made of dust we are yet designed for things that are higher – things that tend toward nobility of character, clarity of vision and purity of purpose. But it’s far too easy to give up on those purposes, to burn out early, once we’re comfortably distanced from the idealism of our youth. The ghosts of our own failures, the absurdities of life and the disappointments of too many shattered faiths move us to become too easily sated, too easily indifferent. Genuinely aspiring to find all our pleasures in meaningful things, we also tend to “pace ourselves,” generally ending up halfway between where we were and where we hoped to be.

Mining for Truth’s relevance in an increasingly shallow and hedonistic culture, we sometimes lose direction, exploring regions of life never designed for human habitation. Of such are the Kingdom. One well-rehearsed mantra encourages, “Heaven will be filled with people who got up one time more often than they fell down.” Let’s hope so. The down-side of that hopeful theodicy is, once you’ve been through the tarnished, sullied and redeemed cycle enough times, finding the courage to “get up and keep walking” becomes akin to rising for an hour of mandated, bone-jarring exercises at 4:30 every morning. Please, it makes the ice jump out of my glass. Thankfully, as God continues to beckon, we exercise our will to make intelligent decisions about our feelings and stand up, wriggle into our spiritual spandex and get going again.

We are on this Long Road Home and this walk, this gift of life, will never end. Death is simply a small place at the end of the world, a turnstile with a bench maybe, where our Earth Suits get tucked away in fancy boxes and our tickets are checked for the last leg of the trip. Knowing such a checkpoint is part of my itinerary, I’ve determined to suck the marrow from my days, living each of them as if they were a bonus.

My Queen and muse tells me, “You’re always rearranging space in your head.” She’s right, and while such information would ordinarily be considered “personal business,” I’ve now discovered a public forum for all such mental wranglings and public notices are warranted. Certain there is nothing new under the sun, my writing will likely appear as nothing more than reshuffled furniture, rearranged space. Deserved criticisms not withstanding, I find myself content, standing on the edge of this digital feather, fully “expecting to fly.”