Along the Way

Nevada 140 somewhere between Winnemucca and Oregon.

I have always been attracted to the journey. Some of my earliest memories involve a Volkswagon Bus and road trips with my older brother. I couldn't have been more than five years old when he started taking me on the road and I caught my first glimpses of America. I began to learn about other places when I was young, and I am still a bit of a wayfarer today. I learned it from my older brother, the traveling fool.

The way I see it, there's something really good to be found for a man on the open road. I believe we learn a great deal about ourselves and how things are when we are removed from our familiar surroundings. That's one of many reasons why I love taking youth on trips outside their own culture. We learn that the rest of the world is not like us. Our senses get awakened, we learn to adapt to others -- making us less about ourselves -- and our spirit's come alive as we see the presence of God everywhere we go.

I used to tell our visiting mission teams in Ireland that "it is not unlike the Lord to bring you thousands of miles just to do a work in you". Almost without exception, he did. Most of our visiting students had encounters with grace and community, purpose and people like they had never experienced before. This had little to do with us and more to do with an awareness that was made to these things that already existed. They were simply in a position open to receive because their senses were alive. After all, the Father is just as present on their college campuses as he is in rural Ireland.

For a country whose history was written by the explorer, the revolutionary, the pioneer, and the inventor -- all travelers of sorts -- we are certainly conditioned to "settle down" and "root". I am aware that there are many nomads who are isolated in their meandering to find themselves or get lost, but I do not believe that all who wonder are lost. There is a tremendous difference between the detached nomad and the pilgrim whose journey seems filled with purpose. While the nomad may be running away, the pioneer and pilgrim is on a journey of discovery. America's pioneers understood "why" they were going, even if they didn't know exactly "where".

Sometimes blessing comes from leaving home. Abraham was told to leave his Father's household eventhough he didn't know where he was going. Even the disciples of Christ left home, father, and the family business to follow a homeless man. No one would argue that their journey was without purpose. From Genesis to the New Testament, the biblical narrative tells the story of the people of God on the move.

There is a remarkable little promise Jesus made to his followers in Matthew 18:20. He said, "Where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them." Equally ground-breaking is the precious encounter Jesus had with a Samaritan woman in John 4 when he said to her, "Believe me woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain" (referring to the Samaritan holy place) "or in Jerusalem" (referring to the Temple). Both of these statements of Jesus were quite revolutionary. The Jewish people were a people connected to place -- the Temple -- and they had a hard time worshipping God when they were not in that place.

Something dramatically changed when the curtain of the Temple was torn in two upon Jesus's crucifixion. No longer was the presence of God tied to a place. We find our home with him wherever we go along the way. In fact, followers of Christ were known as The Way before they were commonly called Christians. Today, we often think of our church buildings as places to meet with God, and millions do. We have been taught to expect to meet with God in these places, but we must remember that the Spirit of God is not bound by bricks and morter. His presence can be found in the coffee house, the church house, and in my house.

All too often, we legitimize churches because of their building (their place). Why do forget that our legitimacy comes from Jesus, and he is present with us "as we go"? I recently read an author who said that a church filled with God's Spirit is never allowed to settle down. Settling down seems attractive, safe, and right to us -- and it is certainly easier to control. I'm just not so convinced that following Christ was ever meant to be confined to a place. We are the living Body of the living Christ, and just as the Father would not allow himself to be contained by Temple walls, neither should we be. He has determined for his grace and mercy to move across the world on the backs of his traveling fools.

The work of God -- nor the worship of God -- should or can be contained by a building. There must be a fluid movement -- in and out of our buildings -- of the people who love God. As for the wayfarers in our midst? Don't discount their journey. They may be on to something very close to the heart of God!