Dear one,
In a recent conversation, I heard that oft-repeated line: “It’s the journey that’s important, not the destination.” After a pause, I responded: “Perhaps, but maybe it’s both.” Since that conversation and my initial response, I’ve given further thought to “journey.”
Both in terms of personality and life-experience, I recognize and even laud that our lives are regularly characterized by process. Growth in this world, especially as our natural environment testifies, means change and/or process: from the acorn to the sprout to the first tentative roots and leaves to the slim stem to … well, thirty years later a magnificent tree. So yes, ours is a world of process even as our lives are always “in process.” And yes, process is important, and the difference between a glorious and mature oak and one that is not, or one that was tilled under, reflects a different origin and/or process.
However, the moment we employ the word “journey,” explicitly we understand that a destination is in view, even as we understand that all journeys are “an act of traveling from one place to another.”[1] Likewise, a “journal,” related to “diurnal,” was originally a book noting times of daily prayer, but later became the record of a day’s passage from dawn to dusk, twilight to twilight.[2] Perhaps I’m only stating the obvious—and I do recognize that we are a culture that places a high premium upon “the product,” “the end game,” or “the goal,” whereby we justify the means by its end—and yet, the journey’s destination does strongly dictate its progress or process. In my limited experience, it matters greatly whether my final destination is Utah or Uganda.
Two days ago, I shared with others Luke 9:51, where literally we read: “Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem,” that is, His predetermined destination was Jerusalem. From that moment forward, everything He did and said was to be seen, understood, and experienced in the light of His impending death and resurrection. In chapters 10-22 of Luke, we read of some of His most memorable and powerful parables; of several dramatic healings; of continual conflict with the religious authorities; and of His further directing and redirecting His disciples. But again, we dare not separate these moments of His journey from His destination. If we do, we will discover that what He said and did lose their vibrancy—lose their significance, and can therefore be easily massaged into pleasant words and deeds. But if they remain together, we will discover that He is both the way and the destination.
From my perspective, life is a journey that can be marked by stages or seasons, during which we often ask: Now how shall I/we live? But these “now questions” will be greatly shaped, if not transformed, by the “final then” of our destination. The destination does determine the process or journey, for all along the way, we are making decisions in the light of the destination.[3]
In the Way,
Stan
[1] New American Oxford Dictionary.
[2] Ibid.
[3] However, it’s very possible to profess one destination all the while making decisions consistent with an entirely different destination. The vagaries and deceit of the human heart/mind …