All Scriptures quoted are from The New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise quoted.

In the years of my older childhood, my favorite vacations were the trips my dad and I took, just the two of us. My grandmother’s house on my mother’s side was just a little cracker box shotgun house in High Island, Texas, a little too crowded for a mom and her son-in-law. Since virtually every vacation we ever took as a family started at my dad’s mother-in-law’s house, he and I would deposit my mother and two sisters there and just take off for a week by ourselves. “Where are we going this year, dad?” “Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see when we get there.” If dad had more in mind than that, he didn’t let me know. All I knew was that he was the best driver on the road and I was safe in the passenger seat on one more adventure of a lifetime.

We’d just start down the road with a tank full of gas in that old ’57 blue and white two-door V-8 standard transmission Ford Fairlane, the one with those big fan tails on either side. One year we ended up in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where my father instilled in me a curiosity for Civil War history that is insatiable to this day. One year, we went only a short distance to the backwoods of East Texas, near Shelbyville. An old man we just happened to meet walked us back into the woods. It was there we found the remains, just some railroad ruts, of the old logging camp where dad was born in 1926. His head was so misshapen from the birth process that the doctor told my grandmother she should just let him die. Thank God, a mother’s love won that argument.

One year we made it all the way to Cape Canaveral. I didn’t see any astronauts or space ships. But, I saw where it all happened, back in those Apollo 13 days when man was first getting ready to walk on the moon. On and on, one summer after another, my father and I just piled in that car with our guy stuff, not knowing where we were going to sleep that night or take our next meal. I don’t know that I ever had as much fun, just being on the road with dad and looking for what was waiting for us around the next bend. Funny how, as time goes by, I don’t remember the places as much as I remember just being with dad. That was the best part.

What has been the best part of this life’s journey for you? Are you still traveling? Are you still on the move toward the what apostle Paul defined as “the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians. 3:14, NASV)? Any chance you’ve stalled out somewhere along the way, tires flattened by the hazards of sin that pothole the road? Is there any hunger in you to go just another mile, just in case you’ve missed something God intended you to see and experience? Is there an unfilled passion in you to keep traveling? It’s always about the journey, this thing of being a follower of Jesus. It’s always more about where we are headed than where we stand in any given moment.

It’s in our spiritual family’s DNA, this thing of hungering for the next place. We can trace it all the way back to the call of God on our great-great-great grandfather in the faith, Abram, later known as Abraham. “Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.’”

It’s always about the journey, to another place, that we are called. If not geographically, at least spiritually, it’s always about going or growing to another place than the one where we stand. So much so that, by the time the apostle Peter wrote one of his letters to the early church, he addressed them as “God’s elect, strangers in the world . . .” (1 Peter 1:1, NASV). An expression that, by definition, means that wherever the follower of Jesus finds himself, it’s only a place to be for a while until the journey’s call leads him on. It’s a journey that may be treacherous at times but never boring. That’s because the journey is about letting go of what so easily comforts and reassures us in order that others might know the blessing that is ours.

It’s a journey that defines faith not so much as a set of fixed facts but more as, well, a journey with the one who loves us. Faith is a journey. The writer of Hebrews, as the late Foy Valentine would say, “whoever she was,” was very specific about that. When referring to our spiritual forefather journeymen, she described them as, “still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth” (Hebrews 11:13, NASV).

Have you ever thought of faith like that, as a journey to a place you’ve never seen or known? How thrilling! How exhilarating! Even at seventy-five, Abram heard that call, said ‘yes’ to it and, well, his offspring are still finding themselves spiritual gypsies in a world where even the idea of getting everything nailed down is seen as much a false god as any figurine that ever stood in a temple built to a god who never lived except in someone’s imagination.

It’s a journey of faith to a land God will show us. What God ultimately has for us is still out there, only within reach of faith. It’s still out there, for each of us, for Cliff Temple – whatever God has for us. It’s faith that God is after. That’s because we don’t need faith for standing still as much as we do for moving into unknown places. In this place, I know what I have; I can see what I can see. My electric and gas bills and mortgage are all paid up to date, unlike some with whom I visited this week. My wife and children are within reach, unlike some with whom I visited this week. My friends are close by, unlike some with whom I visited this week. My routine is predictable to the point of boredom sometimes.

I don’t need faith for what I can see and touch and hold. I need faith for the unknown. We’ve been called, first and foremost, to be a people born and bred of faith. We are always called to a new journey, to a land, as God told Abram, that he will show us, not one we can see and feel beneath our feet right now. One we can only know for sure is even there – by faith.

Sometimes, the journey isn’t that far. Like this past Wednesday night. Nine times out of ten, when I walk into the Fellowship Hall, I feel as at home there as I do in my living room at home. How many church events have taken place in there celebrating some significant event in this church’s life? How many wedding receptions, retirement parties, after-church fellowships? How many Bible studies?

This past Wednesday night when I stood in the door, it looked a different place. It was full of families who don’t go to church here, whose names I didn’t know, with different colors of skin and different languages. Michelle and Judy had told the kids of this community they could come here and be safe and play games in this church to celebrate Valentine’s Day. They came by the hundreds, with proud moms and dads taking pictures of their children winning little prizes that had great value to them, and to us. And, here and there, the love of Jesus was just being passed out for free. From the door, it looked a little different, a little less like the place that always made me automatically feel at home. I knew, standing in the door, I was called to walk on in, that going into that room was part of the journey too, where I would get to see what Jesus was up to in those young lives.

When we were in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, we took a shuttle bus from the Georgia World Congress Center back to the hotel every night. The last night, Nancy was sick and had stayed in bed all day. I’m not sure what it is about these Baptist meetings that we’re allergic to. How is it that one of us gets sick every time we travel to one? On the bus back to the hotel the last night, I sat by this wonderful black grandmother. We got to visit and know each other just a little on the short journey. She was from Detroit and a different kind of Baptist than I’ve ever known before. You never know who you are going to meet on the journey.

Just as the bus driver turned the last corner in front of the hotel the bus died and would not start despite his best efforts. We were only steps from the hotel. Finally, he opened the door to let us off. Because he had an entire downtown intersection closed off, as we exited the bus he said, “I’m in a heck of a spot.” That’s not exactly what he said, but you get the idea. When he said something about being in a “heck of a spot,” the grandmother said, “Yes, but we are blessed.” I guess whether or not where you are, at any moment on the journey, is a heck of a spot or a point of blessing, depends on your perspective.

No matter where this faith journey in Jesus has called you to walk, no matter how frightening it may be to you right now, even if it is a heck of a place to be, what if it is also a point of God’s blessing you could have never imagined? Could it be both at the same time? Why not?

esus always called his disciples to “follow me.” They never knew where. They just packed what guy stuff they could carry or wear and left everything else behind – and they changed the world! Most of them, as best we can tell, died the death of martyrs. But, those who left us record of their journey indicate that the journey was worth every step! Have you ever taken a journey like that? You could.

In Atlanta, Julie Penington-Russell, the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Georgia, told the story of the first birthday gift she ever got from her husband, when they were still just dating. When she opened the box, she found this horribly ugly fake fur coat. She tried to act excited, just assuming that her boyfriend didn’t know any better or couldn’t afford any better. She modeled it in front of a mirror and bragged on it. All the while, he was getting more and more embarrassed. He had actually found the coat in a nearby dumpster and intended it as a joke. Only later did Julie realize that the real gift was tucked away in a pocket, a set of beautiful gold earrings. They were eventually able to laugh about it.

Sometimes, this gift of the journey to which we are called comes to us in the form of the ugliest opportunity we’ve ever seen, looking and smelling like something someone else would only throw away. That’s because, sometimes, God’s greatest gifts come to us stuffed in the pockets of what look like nothing but junk on the outside. The only thing is, we’ll never know unless we accept the gift, even wear it, the gift of the opportunity to take the journey and then, actually take it. Lent is not a time of year to stop and reflect as much as it is a time to remind us all that we are on a journey, a journey toward the cross and beyond, to the tomb of resurrection.

With all my heart, as surely as I know my own name, as surely as I know that I love my wife and she loves me, as surely as I know I can distinguish the sound of one of my son’s voices in a crowd of thousands, I know that I have been called to this journey with Jesus. I’ve taken the first steps and I simply cannot wait to see what lies just down the road! “Where are we going, Jesus.” “Trust me,” he says, “you’ll know when we get there.”

How long has it been since you took a trip like that? Have you ever taken it? Would you like to start today?