Meet me there

And now for something completely different ...

After a couple of half-serious posts, I thought I might post something serious, with a reflection from Journey a few weeks back ...

Let's say you and a friend are at your house, and you decide to go somewhere else. The friend says to you "you go on ahead, and I'll meet you there." So you both leave your house, and you take a path to your destination. Your friend is not beside you on that path. Are you mad at him? Of course not. The intention was to meet you there, not be at your side for every step along the way.

Yet, do we sometimes find ourselves in a similar situation with God, and get mad at him for only wanting to meet us at a destination, rather than walking every step of the way with us?

A couple of weeks back at Journey, we looked at the first half of Luke chapter 10. It opens by saying (NASB):

Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come.

The Lord did not set out with them. He sent them to places he would be. Future tense.

And yet, this is somethign difficult to grasp, at least for me. Why wouldn't God be with me along the way? Why would God set me on a path, and only want to meet me at the destination?

Yet, the more I meditate and perculate on it, the more it makes sense. He is our Father. If you watch any parent, as their children begin to walk, they stand behind them, arms stretched down in case they fall. As the children become more stable in their walking habits, the fathers bend and stoop less and less. Eventually, it gets to the point where the father can sit across the room, and just enjoy watching his kid walk across the room without any help from him.

So why can't our Father be the same way?

He'll meet us there. Even if he's not there every step of the way. Even if we have to go through rough patches on our journeys. Even if we get delayed on the way. He'll meet us there.

And isn't that reason enough to keep walking towards whatever destinaton He's meeting us at next?