Somewhere Up Ahead

Dear Friends,

Someone told me a long time ago, as I was talking about the plans at the time for the church I was then serving, “You must spend a lot of time in the future.” He was right, it was true at that time, and it is true right now for Brenda and me as I will be retiring at the end of this week.

There’s the story of a little boy who was moving west with his family from Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression. At one stop, the boy was talking with a man who asked, “Are you from Oklahoma?” And the boy answered, “No, we’re from somewhere up ahead.” He didn’t know precisely where the family was going, but he knew that he was no longer from where he’d been. He was now from somewhere in the future, some place yet to be decided and located.

From somewhere up ahead kind of describes where Brenda and I are right now. We are embracing it as a journey of great opportunity and possibility, but it’s a little scary too, because it takes us out of the basic routine of jobs, responsibility, paychecks, a place to be, that has been our lives for all of our 36 years of marriage so far. Suddenly just about everything will be completely different. It is exhilarating though – truly the whole world is open to us right now.

And yet even though we are now (and to some extent we all are) from somewhere up ahead and living in the future, in many ways the future is right now because God is with us now and leading; God is a very present presence in our lives. God is directing us and, although we don’t always know where we are going, he is ever beside us as we journey along. 

I love this brief quote from Henri Nouwen, A Dutch Catholic priest, professor and writer, when he says:

The Master is coming – not tomorrow, but today,
Not next year, but this year,
Not after all our misery is passed, but in the middle of it,
Not in another place, but right here where we are standing.

Our God is full of possibilities, and he is leading us into the future, to somewhere up ahead, but the best news of all is that God is with us each step of the way.

Grace and Hope,
Pastor Duane