Planning for safe passage

Why is it that it seems like the gap between where we are and where we want to be is so gigantic? For many of us, that gap seems like a two-hundred foot ravine we just cannot span. We see the thing we want to be, but we also see where we are today and we somehow discount the possibility of ever getting from here to there. We don't believe a bridge is possible, and it probably isn't in our own power, but in the power and authority of Christ, all things are possible!

So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived! In other words, God was reconciling the world to himself through Christ, by not counting people’s sins against them. He has trusted us with this message of reconciliation.
(2 Corinthians 5:17, 19 CEB)

In my own life, the time and space between 'here' and 'there' has been a constant struggle of trusting and waiting, two things I am always having to learn. As I travel, one of the things I do is examine the landscape I am traveling through. The highways between where I start and where I finish have been prepared for my passage by someone other than me, yet I pass over safely because of their sacrifice and effort. Those bridges which span the canyons and ravines took years of planning and building on occasion. They just didn't spring forth or fit together like building blocks from a kid's toy set. There was specific surveying which occurred and lots of architectural effort in the planning of both the safest route and the most passable.

As I drive around mountains, sometimes I observe the distance between where I am and where I will be in a few minutes is only a couple hundred feet, but I have to go way over here to get way over there. There is no more of a direct route than that one. Despite the closeness of my objective, I must go the route planned out far in advance for my safe passage. Varying from that route can actually be detrimental to my well being!

For some of us, we might do well to recognize the distance is quite small between here and there, but the path we will travel to get there may involve passages we didn't think we would ever have to travel to get there! We ARE being renewed and renewal takes time, across perfectly prepared passages, with calculated precision. Renewal may involve us finding a direct route at times, but when the route seems a little 'round-about' to us, we cannot doubt the wisdom of the one who prepared that route for our passage. Just sayin!

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