Our Journey Through Life: Part 1

Our Journey Through Life

Life is a precious gift, given to each one of us by our Holy Living God, who is the Creator & sustainer of all life.  Like no one else & nothing else, from our first heart beat until our last & then beyond, God promises to walk with us: shaping, guiding & loving us. God is ever present with us, loves us unconditionally, & empowers us by the gift of His Divine Spirit to live reflecting His image in which we are created. However, though God promises to always be with us, He created us with free will & as such we are free to make our own choices as to how we will travel through our days which are composed of both beauty & suffering.  We are not created to be passive observers of this life that God blesses us with.  We are called to be partners with God, as we live actively & intentionally through all our days.  Life is a journey for us, not a guided tour.  All of God’s creation at one time or another will experience both beauty & suffering.  It is up to us how we are going to navigate both.  What we know for certain is God promises to be with us through all of our seasons.  At times the path on our journey of life is smooth, clear & fairly predictable.  At those times we are able to walk in partnership with God in an unencumbered, balanced way.  At other times the path is rocky & uneven & we stumble, fall & lose our way & we need help to regain the equanimity & wholeness that is God’s will & promise for us.  Though we may feel stuck & unbalanced when our journey leads us to rocky ground, as the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans; no matter what hardships, distress, or persecutions or perils life brings our way, nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God.

No doubt, sometimes we just temporarily stumble & inadvertently take a wrong turn & lose our way.  A quick wrong turn that is easily corrected is a benign form of getting lost.  However, sometimes life experiences really can knock us off balance to the point that we find ourselves in the wilderness of life.  When we lose our footing & fall off the balance beam of life, we can forget who we are as an empowered child of God, living in partnership with God.  At these times, we need help; certainly, from God & also from others serving God.  When we are in that place, we need to really work hard to find our way back up on the balance beam of life.  Unexpected things do happen in life & they can lead us into the wilderness; a marriage we thought would last forever can end in divorce, we set out to be healthy & end up with some serious illness, we lose a job we trained extensively for & consequently need to file for bankruptcy, our children choose to be alienated from us, a loved one is killed in an accident or major illness, we become victim of a natural disaster that destroys our home, etc.  Experiences like this do happen as we journey through life. No one is spared suffering in life. So, the questions is: How do we find our way out of the wilderness that engulfs us at times like these?  How do we find the pathway that will lead us out of the wilderness & back into the light of wholeness, health & balance?

~Posted by Rev Kathryn Bindig, MDiv. MS; Spiritual Consultant with assistance from Rich Muscatello; Director of Business Development & Strategy