Posts
Luke
12:40
You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’
Lessons
while walking
The mind wanders when you walk a pilgrimage as I
recently did across northern Spain.
With no phone, TV or media to distract, you feel your
life, joys and sorrows, regrets and hopes, treasured faces from long ago and
futures you’d love to live.
But walk long enough and everything falls away. The
mind quiets, thoughts disappear and you are simply there, walking. The noise in
your mind fades to silence, and all you hear is your own footfalls.
It is then realize you cannot think your way through
... or around ... the confusion and challenges
of your life. You must simply receive what each moment brings ... and keep
walking.
There is peace in this. You can be where you are,
attention tuned to the moment, no longer distracted by a thousand things you
cannot change or fix or understand or resolve.
Don’t
think. Just walk. This became the mantra of my journey. I
repeated it every day, over and over.
Sometimes, the voice was not my own, but a voice of
promise: “Don’t think. Just walk. Keep your eyes and your ears and your heart
open. I will come. I am Love, and I will meet you on the road.”
The promise proved to be true. Every day. It is always
true. The Great Love, as I long ago learned to name the God we know in Jesus
Christ, will meet us on the way.
And so it was, on a warm day in the mountains. There were
two Greek girls who laughed when I told them they were not lost, and a
Columbian man who gave me water as my lungs were about to collapse climbing
Montserrat. There was Dave, from Oakland, limping on a bum knee about the time
I thought I could go no higher, and a young Spanish couple who wanted hold each
other and have their photo taken at the mountaintop. Little did they know they
held my heart, too.
For in each of these the Great Love spoke, “See? I
told you so.
“Just keep walking.”
Pr. David L. Miller
