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Lessons from the Road
I added it up. Here are the stats on my family’s trip to Kentucky...
Length: 4 days.
Driving Time: ~40 hours (that’s the low estimate).
Distance Driven: ~2,300 miles.
Car Games Played: 2 (we rocked “I Spy” and “Mad Gab”)
Funerals Attended: 1
For most people, 40 hours in a car sounds like a death sentence. It sounds like torture. It sounds boring. It sounds like a journey, and indeed it was, but it was not a fruitless journey. In many ways, our journey to Louisville taught us some important lessons about our spiritual journey to heaven. If you’ll allow it, I’d like to share a few lessons from the road.
#1 Distractions Are Deadly
Driving for hours on end can be excruciating. It is hard on the body and the mind. Your legs cramp up, whole sections of the body can go numb and your attention and awareness are blunted. Long distance driving isn’t the most scintillating experience. You and I both know that it can get boring, even monotonous. Still, we cannot tolerate distraction. No phone. No Facebook. No T.V. or Youtube videos. We know that once I take my eyes off the path, once I am distracted, trouble quickly ensues. People die on the road by the thousands because their eyes were distracted.
Could we not say the same about our spiritual journey? Once we take our eyes off the path, trouble quickly ensues. The writer of Hebrews exhorts us to run with eyes fixed on Jesus, “the author and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2). A fixed thing does not move, it does not budge. A fixed thing stays where it is. Our eyes should stay on Jesus. We should always watch Him, always observe how He acted and what He said. We ought never become distracted and look elsewhere for guidance in day to day life. Are we looking to Jesus every day? Don’t let anything keep your focus away from the Savior.
#2 Endurance Trumps Speed
I found myself amazed at a particular truck driver during our trip. I remember passing his truck the first time while he plodded along in the right lane. I remember stopping for breakfast, getting back on the road and passing his truck a second time. I remember stopping for lunch, getting back on the road and passing his truck a third time. We sped along at a higher clip, but that driver had more endurance. When we stopped he kept... truckin’ (pun intended). This was a real life enactment of the tortoise and the hare. In a journey, endurance trumps speed.
Could we not say the same of our spiritual journey? Our journey is aptly described as a walk. “A walk is one step at a time,” Brother Bowman often says. This lifelong walk calls for endurance. “For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise” (Hebrews 10:36). Endurance means to stick to it. Endurance means that once you pick it up you don’t put it down. Endurance means that hardship does not lead to forfeit. Christianity is a lifelong enterprise. If you have picked it up, don’t put it down, you have need of endurance.
Please do not infer that I speak ill of speed. Finding the path to righteousness quickly is better than finding it slowly. Doing the right thing quickly is better than doing it slowly. I’m not saying speed is bad, only that speed is nothing without endurance. I’m reminded of the stony soil in Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13). Jesus tells us this person receives the word with joy immediately. That’s quick! But he is only temporary. Endurance trumps speed. When things are good we tend to blaze the trail of righteousness at a break-neck pace. We also tend to quit when the going gets tough. Don’t quit, endure.
#3 Life Ends
Journeys end. They do not last forever. Everyone reaches the end at some point. An hour and a half into our road trip it certainly felt like Louisville was forever away, but we did arrive eventually. We did make it to the end.
Couldn’t we say the same of our spiritual journey? It is poetically just that the purpose of our physical journey was to memorialize a man who had come to the end of his spiritual journey. We went to a funeral and we watched a man laid to rest; his spiritual journey irrevocably complete. In the end, our greatest lesson came not from the road but from the end of the road. The funeral reminded us that life ends. Perhaps for this purpose Solomon writes, “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men...” (Ecclesiastes 7:2).
Life ends. Our journey here on Earth one day will be irrevocably complete. There will be no more time to fix our eyes on Jesus, find the narrow path of righteousness nor push through the trials of life with endurance. We will be at the end whether we like how we walked or not. So while it is still today, and while my journey is not yet complete, let us remember to keep walking. Will you walk with me?
