Sojourning through life

As I watch my husband grow older, I realize that I too am growing old.  I see my own daughter beginning to enter middle age. It is then that I realize that this life is but a temporary stop on the way to eternity.  We are all sojourning here on earth while we go about the business of life, raising families, working, enjoying friends and relatives. Yet, we are only visitors in this life, wherever we chose to dwell. What is on the other side of this life? For me it is a simple answer. The Lord knows and I trust the Lord.

I have often said that we cannot comprehend infinity bc humans are finite beings. There is nothing in my existence, that I have to compare, that allows me to fathom eternity. So I cannot comprehend a Being with no beginning and no end. As a teenager I often tried to grasp infinity. I would try to imagine this solar system and then what was past that and on and on.  I began to understand that I was not made to understand the things that only God knows. I must learn to be content to fill the time and space I have with things of value. Or with things of no value but those are my choices, there are no others.

People often complain about what they have not accomplished in this life. I ask them about their friends and family. Do they know the Lord? Our lives have value when we are the healers not the hurters. Too often, hurting people hurt other people. How do I fill my life in such a way as to do no harm and to be a healer?  I have my own scars, I do not wish to leave any on others.

Recently, I listened to a pastor give a sermon on tabernacling with God. It helped me form the understanding of my sojourn here on earth. Often I feel like an alien on someone else’s planet. My daughter spoke it so succinctly when she described, “it often feels like being a bride in the middle of a battlefield…” I understood exactly how she felt. Here we are waiting for the bridegroom while the wounded and suffering are all around.  Yet we must ready ourselves for the bridegroom as we sojourn in a land that does not want us, struggling to share the good news of life eternal and life more abundant here on earth. I find it frustrating that it seems as if the people I care the most about don’t understand the love, grace and majesty of living a life full of Christ’s presence. I enjoy many things that my secular friends do but nothing compares to the joy of seeing someone come to know Christ or be healed from a disease or comforted in trials. Nothing compares to having the Lord speak to you and touch your life. But if the Lord never did a miracle or never spoke to me He’d still be God. My understanding of Him does not change Him. He is not fickle and our salvation is not something we need to fret about even though it is the most priceless thing we possess. It is in safe keeping within our Lord’s great Book of Life.

Resting in the assurance of our faith is part of what it means to tabernacle with God, to follow the words of Christ and not the sermons of our pastor or denomination.  To have His name so deeply embedded upon our hearts that we don’t recognize ourselves anymore but only see Him and the only scar we care about is the one that marks where our heart was circumcised when we dedicated ourselves to Him.

We are all on a journey, we know not what path the Lord lays before us but we know it is the only one for us. There is no other that I would desire to follow, no deeper calling than the One that comes from above. Nothing more important to do than to share His love with another.

I smile as I look at my hands, no amount of cream will remove those wrinkles and knowing one day they will blow away like dust. From dust we came to dust we will go… and yet I am at peace with knowing that my journey was not in vain….