Trust Love alone

When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. (Luke 9:51)

The spiritual journey inevitably takes one from what is known to a new country, to ways and places where the joys and comforts of what was must be abandoned.

One can try to hold on, crossing back into old ways in a vain attempt to revive past graces, but they lose their savor. The place you knew and which knew you moves on. The tired cliché is correct: You can’t go home again ... because the home that was is no longer there. Everything changes and so do you.

The road is our home, the road ahead. The Spirit of Life always leads beyond what we have known and cherished to deeper truth and more difficult ways that the heart might surrender its rickety justifications and defenses and learn to trust Love alone.

Biblical stories echo this journey.

The ancient patriarch, Abraham, leaves home with Sarah, his wife, looking for a new land and a new life, somehow trusting the Lord will show him the place when the time is right.

The captive Israelites escape Egyptian bondage and wander homeless, seeking the land God promised yet constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering if they should have stayed in Egypt.

Now, Jesus leaves the lake and villages of Galilee to climb steeper hills in Samaria on his way to Jerusalem. Determination lines his face as he is resolute to complete his mission, likely aware he will die painfully in the process.

He could have stayed safely home in Galilee. Abraham could have remained in the old country. The Israelites could have stayed in Egypt and avoided the blistering heat and deprivation of the desert.

But they didn’t. They trusted the Mystery who spoke in their hearts was a great and unconquerable Love leading them and everyone with them home to a country more alive and beautiful than any they had ever known.

David L. Miller