In my time, I have traveled many thousands of mile across this vast land of what we call America. By no means do I intend to convey that I am a great traveler by today's definition of the word - many today, and some in the past, have traveled the world and seen places, things, and peoples far beyond my wanderings. Nevertheless, if compared to the traveling done by my fore bearers and the majority of humans over the past hundreds of years, I might be considered a "traveled" man. So are you.
Think on it for a minute - your great grandfather or his father probably rarely traveled beyond his own town or region - that was the way of life, when horses or feet were the only means of transportation. Why else do we fascinate ourselves with stories of the great explorers that crossed the seas or who traveled lands far away? They were often lauded simply because they traveled far from their homes where others did not or could not venture.
I love traveling on forgotten and lonely roads, away from our modern highway system - there is a peace and expansion of the mind that comes from it. Getting from one place to another should be more than just getting from one place to another - our finite time on this earth screams out for it to be so. Our travel should be a journey, not just a route, and so should our life.
Travel with me for a few miles, for just a little while...
During our travel through down the lonely road, as we pass by homes in rural places, turn your mind to the people who live in those homes beside the road. Why are they there? What are they doing as we pass? Who are they? What are they thinking? Where is their lifes' journey taking them? What dreams, or fears, or pains, or joys are they experiencing? Alas, how can we know? We can not know, we can only imagine.
One of my favorite authors, Charles Dickens, in one of my favorite books, A Tale of Two Cities, beautifully describes our dilemma this way:
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!
A secret to the heart nearest it...a profound secret and mystery to every other. Truer words have rarely been expressed.
Who knows you best and most deeply? Your wife of many years? Your Father, or perhaps your Mother who bore you and reared you? Your best friend? Your pastor or counselor? Your son, your daughter? Regardless of whom, you and I both know that they know you much less than you know yourself, and how often do even you question who you really are? Dickens was correct - we are a secret to all those around us - but he could have gone further and pointed out a greater truth: we are often a secret even unto ourselves. The deepest longings of our hearts are sometimes mysterious to even ourselves, are they not? We do not know from whence they come, and all too often we do not understand why, or foresee where, they lead us.
If we cannot be truly known by those around us, and if we do not truly understand ourselves, how can we be genuinely comforted during our pain, how can we be joined in celebration of our victories, or in the sadness and disappointment of our defeats? Without being known, can we be anything but deeply alone in our heart? The cry of our heart becomes loud and then desperate, because it is heard by none - like a tree that falls in a deserted wood, or a shout that is unheard by the deaf.
Yet there is Hope, there is One who knows us completely, there is One who hears the desperate cry of our heart. And there is One who in knowing us, loves us completely in our incompleteness.
He wishes us to make ourselves known. Known to those around us, known to ourselves. He teaches us that being known, yes, being vulnerable, opens ears and hearts around us and opens our hearts to those He has touched - to His Eternal One that can enter our heart and heal its deepest longings. He knows, He cares, He satisfies...beyond all human imagination.
One of my favorite American authors, Norman Maclean, who favored us with only a few short stories, once quoted his Presbyterian pastor father's last sermon in A River Runs Through It:
Each one of us here today will, at one time in our lives, look upon a loved one who is in need and ask the same question: We are willing to help, Lord, but what, if anything, is needed? For it is true we can seldom help those closest to us- either we do not know what part of ourselves to give, or, more often than not, the part we have to give is not wanted. And so it is those we live with and should know who elude us, but we can still love them. We can love completely, without complete understanding.
Show love to those around you - understanding is not required.
Know that He loves you completely, with complete understanding.
eye opening
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