Devotion 302 - Pilgrims

Sometimes it is where you are sitting.

Sometimes it’s what you are seeing.

Sometimes it is what you are hearing.

And sometimes it is all three.

I was sitting in the front seat looking in my rear view mirror.

There sat my silent crier.  I thanked God I had looked at just that minute, or I would have missed this moment.

My 10-year old girl so incredibly brave and talented and creative was crying because she had to give a devotion at school.

I thought about my reaction.  A few years ago I am sure I would have verbally launched an “it’s only” or “isn't it just…”, and belittled the emotion out of my own frustration.  You see I like life to go according to plan.  But sometimes plans are turned upside down and set right by the Holy Spirit.  

 He is always the driver and I need to learn to sit in the backseat and watch Him work.

I realized as I set my glance on the rear view mirror how much looking back I have done the last few days.  I had celebrated a birthday.  It wasn't just any birthday, it happened to end in a zero.  That zero set me to thinking.

I thought long and hard about the previous ten years.  

What have I accomplished?  Am I where I thought I would be?

Have I grown in the Lord, have my children?  Am I being a good steward to all God has blessed me with?  Will I have ten more years?

I have spent very little time looking forward, perhaps a luxury afforded for my birthday week.  But as I sat looking back, I saw my daughter, eyes filled with tears doing exactly that.  She was looking forward.

She has in every way, her entire life stretching out before her.  What picture have I painted of the life ahead she can only imagine?

Although I felt frustration course through my body, I was not frustrated with my daughter, or her tears, or my interrupted plan,  I was frustrated and angry with the enemy that taunted my daughter with lies.

I have come to know him well - the liar, and with his acquaintance I have come to know and love his Conqueror.  I told Lily who was the author of her anxiety and that he was not welcome nor was his language of fear and his rumors of inadequacy.  I wanted to paint the picture of what I have learned.  

 I wanted her and all my children to race ahead to a simpler place - a place about which I am only beginning to arrive and to understand.

In this place I look forward and I see.  I see that we are indeed pilgrims journeying to a holy place.  The hole I feel in my heart or the lacking as I reflect is not from failure, it is the foreign land in which I live.

This is not my home. 

I have traveled to many countries.  I have stayed in many places. 
 I have packed and emptied many suitcases, never once have I not wanted to go home.  



I am finding this life is much the same. 

I pack my days with plans.  I travel to work, church, and home but there is always something missing.  Another decade faces me and I search longer and work harder to fill that void, but I cannot because my destination has not been reached.

It is indeed an upward climb, one that finds us straining and sweating and squinting.  Our eyes fill with tears at the difficulty of it all, but it is with those same eyes we will gaze at glory and our hearts will long no more.

“God is the substance.  These (fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children or the company of earthly friends) are but scattered beams, but God is the sun.  These are the streams, but God is the fountain.  These are but drops, but God is the ocean. –  Jonathon Edwards

“And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country." -- Hebrews 11:13, 14