Road To Nowhere

A favorite television show, Bettyann and I enjoy is the “Amazing Race.”  I am unable to remember, over the years, the times, one or the other has asked, “Why don’t they ask where to go?” “They need to borrow someone’s phone to goggle where they need to go.” “Why didn’t they ask the cab driver, before they got in, if he knew where a location was?”  More frustrating is that there are some streets where if they get lost and would like to ask for directions, they should think twice—or rather, ask twice.

Just a few episodes ago one of the couples asked for a location from a local person on the street. "Oh, it is straight ahead, hundred meters away," he said.

So, the female partner yelled to her counterpart who was checking signs of streets, “Down here, straight ahead, run, run, run!” Exhausted after thirty minutes and way past that "hundred meters," they realized that the person had given them wrong directions. Then they attempted to ask another for, hopefully, the right directions. This time, the person whom they asked told them to go back the way they came from for two hundred meters. "How can this be? We just came from there," the male partner informed his team mate. However, she insisted that she was right and that he should trust her. So they finally retreated another half an hour and found themselves back to where they had started, discussed with the locals who had misdirected to them and each other for not reading the clue properly and having faith in each other’s decisions.  Well, that episode ended with them hitting the mat in third place. A real nail bitter.

I’ve learned over the years that when most folks offer directions, including me; we mean well, I’m convinced! But I also think most us pretend we know, to “save face.”  I think, we don’t want to appear ignorant so we convincingly try pointing towards a certain direction—oftentimes, the wrong one.

Metaphorically, trying to get to my destination by asking locals directions is in a lot of ways like how I use to try living my life.  One of the most important lessons learned is no one else really knows where I want to go in life, so it’s folly and waste of time to ask.  Another lesson learned is that my destination is the place where I think I will find answers to my existential questions: Who am I now that I’m an elder? How did I ever get here? Why am I stuck here?  Where do I go next?  How am I going to get there?

At seventy two I’m still longing in some ways at arriving at that seemingly elusive place where the yearning of my heart will be satisfied; where my soul will finally find its home and finally be able to take a nap.  I remain asking this morning how will I get there?  What direction do I go?  For how much longer will be the journey?

As a young man I was told that as long I pursued happiness, it would lead me to my destination.  Then down life’s path of a successful professional, pastoral successful career, my amazing wife and lovely family, and a three bedroom, three bath picket-fenced house, I found that I was not getting any closer to where my heart wanted to go. The soul continued seeking its home.

At midlife, I admit taking the route of pleasure by embracing a certain lifestyle that gratified my self in possessions. One of each! I can only liken myself after Solomon, the king who possessed so much wealth and denied himself nothing he desired, found this path only futility in his years of indulgence. He records this poignantly in Ecclesiastes 2:10-11:

"I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my work,
and this was the reward for all my labor.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun."

The route of unbridled pleasure was a misleading course that did not take me where my soul ultimately was seeking to go.  Then came the stage of  the relativist's way of taking whichever road one wishes, believing they all will lead home. But having previously had plenty of practical experience with roads that may seem to head in the same direction reminded me that they make drastic turns at crucial points and over the years have taken some of my fellow travelers on farther and farther away from each other. Just goes to prove to myself that not all roads can lead to home.

I think that C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, rightly observes that this world will offer us all sorts of things or ways that promise to take us to our soul's destination, but they never quite keep to their word. Am I like most in saying that after the fleeting moment of enchantment leaves me, I find myself back to a starting point. 

On the other hand, however, there is one who professes to know the way to my destination. In fact, He found me way back, during the early part of my journey and He claimed that he IS the way: "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Unlike Eastern
gurus who claim that they have found the way and that they could show their followers the way, Jesus self-assuredly declares that He is the way, and that only through Him will I or anyone else find true rest at our soul's rightful home.

Through all my prayers, tears, discomfort, fear, hope, joy and surprise I remind myself of C.S. Lewis aptly concluding in Mere Christianity, "Look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in."