Will we be holding hands at the finish line?

The deeper I go in this life and the more years I use up, the more important finishing becomes. As a believer and follower of my Christian faith I've always been encouraged to "press towards the mark" to what lies ahead and to end up at the place my faith summons me to.  If there is no end to pursue, why undergo the journey anyway?  A journey without a destination is a vagrancy, not a voyage. But completing life on schedule and well done is important.  The journey is important and as your friendly biker's club would say, "Life is a journey, enjoy the ride".  But then again American Airlines once had a slogan, "We understand, it's not about the journey, it's about the destination."

It's good to have a destination but it's the journey that matters.  "To journey without being changed is to be a nomad.  To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim (John Wayne, just kidding, it was Mark Nepo) .   My favorite: "Life is not about journeys or destinations; it's about how you look while you're traveling."

The journey is very important no matter how hypocritical we might be about it.  Yes, the flowers do need smelling but we keep coming up with reasons to keep our noses in other places.  I personally am the genetically driven guy who is constantly asking, "Are we there yet?"  I think my faith is a theology of journeying.  If you don't meet God along the way, you'll never meet God at the destination.  That is the dynamic tension of the journey vs destination question.

Life is a handicap event.  We can't get to our destination without the help of others. Reality is found not when the rubber meets the road, but when I meet you.  More than we need five ways or seven steps to this, we need relationships, guides and guards who help us along the road of life.  We also need the dynamic power that is released by relationships, a power that draws us beyond ourselves to the beyond itself.  Will we be holding hands when we cross the finish line of life or will you go it alone.  "Anyone who doesn't need company is either greater than a man, and is a God, or lesser than a man, and is a beast (Aristotle, as quoted by Saint Thomas Aquinas).  How about Robert Fulghum's Rules for Kindergarten's that said,  "When you go out into the world, watch out, hold hands, and stick together."  Just in case you might think this is just one of my ideas, God told Adam in the story of Genesis that, "It was not good for man to be alone".  

Our fate is not the result of our faith alone, for no one stands alone.  All notions of self-sufficiency need abandoning.  Your future to be a future needs others who we chose as friends or marriage determines the outcome of our future.  Outside of relationships, there is no "you' or "I".  In fact, it is not "I think, therefore I am (Descartes).  It is "I'm with, therefore I am."  Or more precisely, "We are, therefore I am."  

There are spaces between each of us.  Each of us fills those spaces with someone, something and those filled- in spaces determine our destiny.   There is this romantic notion that one person can meet the needs of another person.  Each of us lives on many levels, and we need multileveled relationships with many different kinds of people to be healthy and whole.  With the decline of extended families in Western cultures, this becomes all the more pressing.  We are all aware of the mystery and divinity of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Even in the blessed Trinity, the Father needs both the Son and Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit both Son and Father, the Son both Father and Holy Spirit - even each Divine person needs at least two others to be fully itself.  How much more do we needs the "others" to be complete on our journey.  

Each of us has a journey. No one can walk it for you, you have to do it yourself.  But there will be those who will walk it "with you."  For is the word for laziness and colonialism.   It is always easier to do things "for" people rather than "with" them.  When we do things for someone, we automatically position ourselves (purposefully or inadvertently) as the 'givers" - which immediately implies that we have attained a certain level of wherewithal or some modicum of success.  It allows us the indulgence of being identified with a benevolent "upper echelon."  It also classifies recipients of our giving as "receivers" or, more disparagingly, "takers."   In the process we demean "the least of these" when we refuse to walk 'with" them and only want to do it for them.  

The destination of this essay, is a clearer picture of how and why God chose to incarnate Himself in the person of Jesus Christ.  His plan all along was to be "with us" on our journey and the prize at the destination.  How revolutionary to know that God our creator created us so He could be with us.  I meet far too many a person who is looking for a God to "do" it for them (the just do it god).  God's promise from start to finish in the bible or in life was, "I will be with you until the end"   Many a man has desired to become God, but only one God has ever desired to become Man.