I recently drove the eight-hour trip from Durban to Pretoria, returning along the same route a few days later. We’d spent days packing the car with the necessary paraphernalia for a move out of a one-room student residence into a self-contained but unfurnished apartment. We resembled a snail travelling with a shell-house on its back.
It was a great drive. Mist hung over the mountains, cloaking them in the blanket of winter. At the first stop, everyone shivered at one another in greeting, cradling cups of hot coffee between hands desperate for warmth. Well, mine were anyway! We ate muffins and croissants, spilled crumbs and laughed. We continued on our way.
I love travelling. Car, train, plane, boat – I love them all. I’ve played ‘eye spy’ in a car around Europe; trained from one end of India to the other. I’ve sat squashed into a metal tube with hundreds of other people flying from one side of the world to the other; I’ve survived a Force 10 gale on a ship to Norway.
Preparing to travel is almost as wonderful as the journey itself. There’s snacks and games to prepare and pack. Stories to download and movies to read up on. Once ensconced inside the chosen form of transport, there’s a space to cultivate, to shape, to own.
Then there’s the heart-stopping panic of the moment of departure. Have I packed everything? Am I on the right platform, in the right carriage? Will we defy gravity and take to the skies?
Finally, there’s the moment of no return. We’re too far from home to turn back and fetch that forgotten essential. We’ve left the station and trains don’t go backwards. The plane has left the runway.
Now the joy of the journey begins. The heart rate slows, the music starts to play, the story unfolds. Fields and forests slip by, the sun shines in constant brilliance above the clouds. The horizon is distant and the sky is wide.
Time is suspended and thoughts are free to wander.
Everything I am is contained in this moment, is held in this bubble. I slip from departure point to destination, unable to fix or change anything in the one, to influence anything in the other. My past is behind and the future beckons — while I occupy only the now.
As the landscape flicks past, as clouds scud along in cotton-wool companionship or a phosphorescent wake adorns the waves, I become conscious of one of those whispers which can only be from Jesus.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega the Beginning and the End,” says the Lord God, “Who is [existing forever] and Who was [continually existing in the past] and Who is to come, the Almighty [the Omnipotent, the Ruler of all.”
Revelation 1:17 (Amplified version)
Jesus is the Lord of the past, the God of the future. And the King of everything in between. He is the departure, the destination — and the journey.
He calls me to “forget the former things”. Today is a new day, with fresh mercies and delights.
He tells me “not to worry about tomorrow”. He takes care of all the details.
He invites me into the adventure that is today. He asks me to pray and see lame men walk and deaf men hear. He draws me into the landscape of salvation, into a place of pilgrimage brimming with springs of life and bursting with abundance. He asks me to watch, to observe, to notice. To be still and know that he is God.
The thing is, am I ready for the journey? Am I prepared to leave yesterday behind, keeping short accounts and packing lightly for the road ahead? Or is the backpack I carry laden with hurts and disappointments, regrets and recriminations?
Or am I so fixated on the destination, on where I’m going and what will happen next, that miracles pass by without me noticing? Am I so hankering after milk and honey that I miss the miracle of manna?
Jesus walked at the pace of a donkey with his disciples. They weren’t in a hurry. There was time to teach and joke and comfort and listen. To break bread together. To prepare. John writes, “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” John 21:25. Perhaps Jesus did some of the ‘many things’ during those in-between moments after departure and before arrival.
Perhaps he still does.
There is such a glorious freedom in travel, once the journey is underway. I’m not necessarily the driver. I’m not the pilot or the captain. I can relinquish control and trust that someone else knows the routes and the co-ordinates. Success doesn’t rest entirely on my shoulders.
When I embrace each new day knowing Jesus is in control at any and every given moment, I can sit back and relax, watch the landscape and enjoy the view. I can be on the lookout for surprising discoveries around each corner, delight in conversation with my fellow pilgrims, dwell in the moment between what was and what is to come.
I love travelling. Don’t you?