Walking Home

Footsteps echoing across time, one after another.  Dust rising gently from each footfall.  How wonderful it feels when we know that we are on that last part of the journey and home awaits.  Good and comforting.   A place of refuge.  A place of rest.  Weary bones sag into a comfortable chair while hot sweaty feet cool in the breeze from the lake.  It is good coming home!

Not every walk or hike is like this, but that last part of the journey, knowing that you are past the halfway mark and are on the back half of the walk is always the best part.  Is life like that as well?  I am finding that this part of the journey is becoming more sweet in knowing that the mid-point in life has been reached and now I am walking home.  Is it the destination that I long for, or is it that I am just becoming more comfortable with the road that I am on?

The bible teaches us to set our minds on things of heaven, not things of earth.  I find that hard when I am still earthbound and still human.  Just this week I heard a comment that one can be so heavenly minded that he is of no earthly use.  That is not where I want to be, nor how I want to be remembered.  I want to be the one who washes the dusty feet of the weary traveler and one who provides refuge and rest.  Is that a heavenly goal or one that is grounded in an earthly existence.

What I have found on this journey is that it is hard enough without carrying a bag full of rocks of resentment, bricks of anger and shouldering the burden of excessive fears.  Somewhere along the first part of the journey I started picking them up and putting them in my backpack.  I wanted to keep them hidden so that others couldn't see the load I was carrying.  Once revealed, they could then be discarded and the burden lightened.  Now I have to be ever vigilant not to pick them up again.

I am certainly not ready for the journey to end as I know that there is much more wonder and splendor to behold, but it is still good to know that I am walking home!

Travel well!