A Reflection on Arriving
by Lewis“You Have Arrived”
How do you know when you get there?
That sounds like a simple enough question to answer, assuming you know the destination. And that isn’t always obvious.
Take my adventures during this past week, for instance. My wife and I, along with her mother and her brother and his wife, all planned on going on vacation together in Hawaii. You will note there are two destinations in that statement, and we only arrived at one of them.
The good news is, the one we failed to reach was the least important. We tried for two days to find adequate space on one of United Airlines‘ flights to Kauai, even traveling to Los Angeles in hopes of getting on a plane there. But we didn’t have any success, and the odds did not look good for the next day, either.
Realizing that our real destination was vacation, and not Hawaii, we selected a different geographical location — one that could be reached by car — and the next day found ourselves enjoying the beauty and relaxation of California’s Gold Country. (We might have headed east sooner, but our luggage did make it to Hawaii, so we made one more trip to San Francisco International Airport to retrieve it before leaving. That was the closest we came to the Islands, with the possible exception of using some Hawaiian Tropic sunscreen one day.)
As we headed for the hills, my brother-in-law put the address where we were staying into his GPS unit, and as we pulled up in front of the house the unit announced, “You have arrived.”
“Good to know,” I remarked. And I silently wondered if one day I would hear similar words from God.
But there are destinations to be reached before the ultimate destination, and one of those, the destination of spiritual maturity, is spoken of in Hebrews 5 and 6, especially in 6.1 which says, “Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity….”
Will you know when you get there? Will it be the place you thought you were going?
Tags: gold country, Hawaii, Kauai, spiritual maturity, vacation