27 July 2012

(Almost) 40 Days of Travel

The last several days I have been thinking about a song by Keith Green, So You Wanna Go Back To Egypt.

One of the lines in the song, "all we do is travel and we travel so much," describes what my family has been doing for the past four weeks, and what we will be doing for two more - traveling.

On May 18th we set our sights on Springfield, Missouri for an interview at Schweitzer United Methodist Church. Following a round of interviews and accepting an invitation to join the staff we returned to Wilmore to pack up our gear embark on a westward trip.

But first, we took our earthly goods in Wilmore and joined them with our belongings in a trailer in Mt. Pleasant, MI. Following a memorial service for Anna's grandfather - Grandpa Gordon, we turned our sights to the west. We have stayed in West Des Moines, Iowa; Denver, Colorado; Lander, Wyoming; Driggs, Idaho; Gillette, Wyoming; Rapid City, South Dakota; Fairmont, Minnesota, Osh Kosh, Wisconsin; Quincy, Michigan; and now Sharon, Pennsylvania. The last couple of weeks will take us to Michigan and conclude with arriving in Springfield before July.

We have been blessed along our route to meet some great people, see some magnificent sights, visit with some dear friends and family, rejoice in some work completed, and anticipate the unfolding of the next chapter of life. At the same time we have been living in a unique and somewhat uncomfortable space. I'm not sure who originated the term but the idea and language of liminality speaks to our situation. We are living in a space that is in between - between an ending and a beginning. It can be a precarious space.

In that space we face a thousand questions and for many of them we have few, if any, answers. Thus something happens, we turn to what we know,or have known. The ambiguity crushes the adventure out of us and we turn back to the familiar.

Such a move is what the Israelites did when they left Egypt and headed toward the promised land of Israel. They longed for the security of familiarity. We too have faced those longings on our journey and that's why I've been thinking of Keith Green's song.
        

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