Our focus for today will be that of “journey.”
Several years ago, I attended a youth retreat. During one of the breakout sessions, a friend of mine was leading a small group discussion on the idea of “packing for the journey.” It was a reference to preparing to take your faith more seriously. To live it our more intentionally.
I don’t remember everything that he said. But I do remember one of the things that he did. In the middle of the room was a huge tent, one that you would take when you went out camping. And around the tent, he had set up what looked like a campsite, minus the fire. The biggest impression that that example left me was with the idea that the Christian faith is a journey. And as with every journey, we must learn to prepare for what is ahead.
One of the key ideas that we talk about at our local congregation almost every week is the idea that we want to normalize the Christian life. What that means is that we desire for every believer to take into consideration what it is going to take to live a life that is pleasing to God and satisfactory to us.
The journey that we are on as believers in Christ, and as sojourners in this world, waiting for our time to be with God forever, requires us to take into account how we live our faith. We have to take inventory of what we must do in order to live a life that consistently reflects what we believe about God, about the gospel, and about ourselves.
The reality is that the journey that we’re on requires us to take into account the many things that will come across our path. We cannot anticipate everything, but we can prepare for almost anything if we would just consider the way that life is lived.
It is true, that the gospel life that we are called to live is one that is very different from the world around us. And yet there are many things that are consistent, even constant. We must seek every day to be prayerful, to read the Scripture. To be mindful of the fact that the call to worship is not something that merely happens one day a week, but happens every single day. We must learn to engage in this journey actively and not allow this journey to happen to us in some passive sense.
In this season of Lent, as we move diligently and intentionally toward Resurrection Sunday, I encourage you to consider the journey that you’re on and to ask yourself, “Am I doing everything that I can to be prepared for what might come.”
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