Journeys

Journeys are the midwives of thought...
Large thoughts
At times requiring
Large views,
And new thoughts,
New places.
Introspective
Reflections which are liable
To stall are helped along by
The flow of the
Landscape.
—Allan  de Botton, The Art of Travel

I have been back in the Cook Islands for 3 weeks now. All the traveling has made me think of journeys. I came across this quote this afternoon, while I was at a coffee shop, flipping through magazines and chatting with tourists. I was especially struck by the first bit, Journeys are the midwives of thought...large thoughts, at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places.

Journeys are the midwives of thought...In other words, going on a journey, whether physically travelling, or going on a spiritual or emotional journey (that is experiencing growth, not some mystical trip into your mind or some fantasy world) will bring forth or birth thought.

Simply put, a journey brings you from one place to another. Which we all know, but God spoke to me through this. A journey will cause you to think of things differently, to see things differently.

If you get into a vehicle and the vehicle never leaves the spot where it is parked, you have not gone anywhere. You have not taken a journey. Let’s take it a step further.

If you take a journey and are exposed to different landscapes or different ways of doing things and you come home and you are exactly the way you were before, you have not been on a journey. Yes, you have gone somewhere physically, but your mind, who you are as a person, has not changed, you have not gone on a journey. Let’s take it one step further.

If God brings circumstances your way, uproots you from one place to another, causes you to face trials, no matter how hard or difficult, and after the trial or circumstance has passed, you are the exact same as you were before, you have not grown, you have not gone on a journey.

Paul likens our spiritual walk to a race. In a race you have a start and a finish. You begin somewhere and you end somewhere else. In our spiritual walks we are to take a journey. The things God takes us through bring us from being dead to sin to being alive and one with God.

This challenged me. There are things that I go through at times that make me want to resent God, that make me ask God, why? But this afternoon I realized that I can choose how to respond to the challenges God brings my way. I can resent God, stay stubborn, and never leave the start line, but I will never go on a journey, I will never see what else God has in store for me.

Or I can choose to face the difficulty, leave the start line and begin the long, grueling journey to the finish line. I will probably want to give up sometimes—anyone who runs knows that there are days you hurt too much to want to keep running—and there will be times I might just sit down in the middle of the race, but if I run the race, I know that God will take me on a journey with these words as a reward, Well done child, enter into My joy.

But i have to choose to run the race, I have to choose to take the journey.

During one of our daily prayer times, God revealed the importance of this choice to me. This is what I wrote in my journal—

God provides us with salvation, with life, with our very breath.
Satan comes only to steal, to kill, to destroy.
Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

I choose to run the race. I choose to take the journey.