The Greatest Journey
Author: Marvin Lindsay
December 01, 2022
It was so nice of you to ask about my trip to Missouri and back last week. I quickly settled on a stock reply: “No tickets and no crashes.” Even better, my wife and son have now joined me here in New Jersey! The moving van is scheduled to arrive at our new home in Haddon Heights Friday morning.
In the Bible, God’s people are often on the move. Abraham and Sarah left home when Abraham was 75 years old in the hope that God would give them a child in their old age, and their descendants would inherit the land of Canaan. Imagine starting over at age 75! Abraham and Sarah’s descendants did inherit the land, but not before being enslaved by the Egyptians and led out of slavery by Moses. Their return to the Promised Land was long, and the Israelites complained the whole way, like kids in the back seat of the car, crying, “Are we there yet?” Many generations later, God allowed Jerusalem to be sacked and its residents to be deported. That was a journey of defeat occasioned by divine judgment. After 70 years, God raised up the Persian King Cyrus who defeated the Jewish people’s Babylonian oppressors and permitted the Jewish people to return home.
The greatest journey of all is the one we remember each Christmas. The Son of God stepped out of eternity into time. The Son emptied himself of divine power and glory to be born in a barn to a peasant woman who found herself far from home. God the Son made this greatest and lengthiest journey for our sake. We had gone astray. We were lost. The Son of God came looking for us and found us and has gone before us into the heavens where he is preparing a place for us.
Are you starting over this Christmas? Are you returning home to see family and old friends? Are you not where you want to be this season, either because of circumstances beyond your control or poor decisions you have made? All of us are on a journey, either real or figurative. If we are in Christ, we can trust that the destination is worth the wait and is better than any way station we stop at enroute.
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