Go West young man!

Yesterday we drove up the 174 towards Flagstaff, through Sedona.  It is one of those drives that draws you in.  Not long after making the turn off highway 17 you catch your first glimpse of the red rock formations that make this area such a beautiful place. The first formations you see act like a sentinels marking the beginning of a very stunning journey.  With each turn in the road, another vista is revealed and your soul is drawn deeper into the scenery.  

 

Eventually you pass through the city of Sedona.  Here, even the buildings seem to be married to the surrounding landscape.  They too are beautiful.  As you drive past Sedona proper, the wide-open space above your head slowly is filled in with the green canopy of the forest. 

This provides an entirely different experience of magnificence creation has to offer.  The hot sun now shielded from your face, you are enveloped in the cool breeze and the smell of the woods.  It remains this way as you climb out of the valley towards Flagstaff.

Given all of this, it is totally understandable why so many people get off the main highway and take the longer route through this scenic area.

Today we have been driving from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City.  The landscape is much different.  It is wide open and for mile after mile, flat.  It is covered with dry grass and trees that are no taller than a man.  These do not grow straight up, but rather are bent and misshapen by the winds that come sweeping through the plains.

When you do see a tree that is of substantial size, it is often isolated and alone and gives no hope for shelter, water, or rest.

There are areas where there are Mesas in the distance, and though these possess their own majesty, they too seem like isolated and desolate places. 

Do not get me wrong.  It is a grand and beautiful landscape, but it does not draw you in like the place we were driving yesterday.  If anything, it invites you to stop.  The drive yesterday enticed you with new vistas around each corner.  Today’s drive makes you feel as if you may never get there.  The land is so big and unending.  You are so small.

Looking at this for the past few hours I could not help but think about the fact it took those who were headed West days, maybe even weeks to cover this same distance.  Each day they were confronted by a landscape that was always beckoning them to stop.  It offered no hope of what lay just around the corner, but rather sweeping views of another day, another week, maybe months of traveling through what seemed to be an endless land.

And yet they headed West.

What called them to make such an arduous journey?  What enabled them to get up every morning and head out once again; knowing the placed they stopped at the end of the day would look very much the place they just slept?

I can only think of one thing.  Hope.

They hoped they would be able to leave behind the poverty, hardship and lack of opportunity of their old life.  They hoped they would find a land flowing with milk and honey.  A hoped for a place they could make their own, fertile farmland, and the promise that there was gold simply laying in the streams.  All you had to do was pick it up.  They hoped for a new beginning, a new life, and a new home.

This hope enabled them to rise every morning and look past what they could see to the promise of what lay before them.

I thinking of this, I could not help but think about Abraham, who also left his home to go to a land to which he was called.  I wondered what it must have been like each morning for him as he rose and set off for a place he could not see.  Did the land ever beckon him to stop? Was he pulled along by the promise?

I am confident that he was.

As I sat there, staring out the window I realized not every journey is measured in miles.  Sometimes the beautiful, desolate landscape lies within.  We have left the place we call home and we have not yet arrived at the place of promise.  We find ourselves waking each morning, with no sign on the horizon that we have arrived, no ability to go back, and the internal terrain inviting us to stop.  What will we do?

I suggest we hope.

I think of the Rocky Mountains that would eventually rise before these sojourners.  I think of the slopes of the Sierra Nevada Range that would lead them to the fertile ground of the San Joaquin Valley.  I think of the waters of the San Francisco Bay, and the trade and industry it would support.  I think of that man, who was working at a sawmill, reaching down into the stream to pick out a nugget of gold, and I cannot help but suggest their hope was not in vain.

I think of Abraham’s decedents taking possession of the land.  I think of them becoming a great people, more numerous than the grains of sand on the shore or the stars in the sky.  I think of how every nation on the earth has been blessed through them, and I have to assert that the one who promises is faithful.

I think about you and me, and I know that we too have received a promise.  We too have been invited to leave our home and set off for a distant kingdom.  Sometimes it feels as if it is so very far away, and yet we are told it can be present within us, if we but dare to believe, hope and trust.

Without having fully seen it, I can imagine what it would be like to arrive there.  All things would be rooted and grounded in love.  Ambition and fear would give way to freedom and selflessness.  People would be changed by compassion.  Shame and guilt would be washed away by rivers of forgiveness. Those who fear rejection would be accepted. Those who are lonely and isolated would find a place belonging.  Those who are sick would find healing.  Those in need would not want. People would find joy in generosity and delight in sharing.  People would be kind to one another.  They would keep no record of wrongs. There would be peace, and we would all find a place to call home.

Each time we arise and are reminded of the vast landscape separating us from that place, let us dare to hope. Let us covenant together that we will not give in to the temptation to stop. We will set out once again, holding on to the promise of what is and will be.

I am confident; it will not be long before we see the Rocky Mountains rising from the plains.