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Understanding Our Journey

July 21, 2010

Days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years; awake at six and back down at ten or eleven (check the calendar before you go to sleep so you know what is facing you the next day). Much of what I do between the hours is forgotten; at the end of the week when someone asks me, “how was your week,” I often can’t remember how it was.

Proverbs (in the Bible) today, is urging me to do more than “live out” my days: “The wisdom of the sensible is to understand his way” (Proverbs 14:8).

Do I, do you understand your way?


  • Do you ever stop doing, doing, doing. Just stop? I don’t mean the kind where you drop onto the couch and flick on the TV. I mean the kind where you choose to stop and think with purpose.

  • Do you pause between one thing and another? Or do you just blaze ahead, solve your dilemma, find a new job (*This from a Twitter today: “Heard this recently: “The average person under 40 will change jobs every 20 months for the rest of their lives.” Pete MacIntosh), latch onto a new relationship, move on, move out, move in, move over? A certain group of monks always observe the “moments between moments” and we would do well to do the same, to understand where we have just been and where we should be next (not just could be).

  • Do you ask yourself good questions? I don’t mean the heat-of-the-moment ones, I mean the smart, unhurried ones that actually help you understand you, your life, your world?

  • Do you ask yourself good questions? I don’t mean the heat-of-the-moment ones, I mean the smart, unhurried ones that actually help you understand you, your life, your world?

  • What’s going on in that inner world of yours these days?

There’s many-a-day where I just get through it and get it done; but something is amiss in all of that; something tugs at me and calls me.

This morning I was thinking about all of this while swimming laps at JBMAC. The first half is me working way too hard to get across the pool (do not imagine style and grace), but the second half I just put the fins on, get out a board and I swim, head down, staring at the blue tiles at the bottom of the lane; and I think. No one says a word to me in the sanctuary of the water; and so, back and forth and back and forth, thinking about this Proverb.

A whisper: a word comes to mind and I am more than a little excited to unlock it. That’s how I find God works in me; sometimes one word out of His Words. Sometimes a little thought and it sends me somewhere, on a journey. It doesn’t always happen this way, I don’t always feel like going on a journey. I miss words; I miss nudges. Sometimes I am just distracted; sometimes I really do not want to hear from God. But when my ears are open; things come to mind and I turn it over and over and hope that the seed finds fertile soil in my heart.

Even if we don’t travel anywhere in particular, we are travelers; pilgrims. We are designed to discover things – far away things or things in our own backyard; things that are distant from us, things that are in front of us. Mike did a great paper on this topic, based on a book he read called the “Art of Pilgrimage” (if you want to know more, go to http://www.mybookreviews.info). He quotes in his paper,

“We all have a longing to discover something and unfortunately we can travel and not actually discover, we can put on miles and not see anything. Mark Twain says that travel has a way to eliminate narrow-mindedness, but this requires of the traveler a kind of introspective; as she covers the ground outwardly, so she advances fresh interpretations of herself inwardly.”

And this is what Proverbs is calling us to: fresh interpretations. How fresh are mine? Am I living on interpretations handed off to me? Knocked into me? Borrowed from others? Am I interpreting life based on correct understanding or out of my illusions or disillusionment? Would my whole life change if I had a new interpretation of it?

The way you tell me to live, God, is always right; help me understand it so I can live to the fullest. (Psalm 119:144 MSG)

– Teresa Klassen (http://onebrownleaf.wordpress.com)

Afterword: The word that came to mind as I swam was the word “consider;” that might not seem like anything to you, but it is my white rabbit. If you want to know where it is taking me; here is what I did next. I made a list of “consider the” phrases found in the Bible and I am going to take a run at each one over the next weeks. Join me if you like; its a work in progress. If you want to follow along, visit http://onebrownleaf.wordpress.com

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