The one who wrote those words (“I Want Jesus To Walk With Me) understood the trouble needs.  We have an image in the world that our journey of life should be free of trouble.  But we know that’s not true.  As we enter this time of Lent and continue in preparation, we have chosen the theme “Encountering Grace”, encountering God’s grace.  And today we are focusing on a journey—the journey of life which has troubles.  The deep expression of trouble in that song, I can relate to.  Not in a personal way that I have felt that deeply, but I have seen it in the lives of others.  As Pastor Nancy mentioned about a tornado in Alabama and Georgia and there will be more; it’s the season.  We can expect it.  And our situation, Joyce and myself, we are survivors of one directly together and I missed another one by five minutes after I moved here!  I thought I was escaping where tornadoes happen in Evansville.  And there was one here also and I missed it by five minutes. 

            But that morning, it hit just north of us.  Yesterday we could go out on the streets and we could see the street signs and know where we were.  And it was clear.  That was so and so lived.  You turn left here and you go down to the store.  And you go right here and you know where you are headed toward.  But the next morning it was all gone.  The street signs, the homes, the things by which you could identify where you were on your journey.  Nobody had one of these (compass) but these do come in handy when you are disoriented and lose your way whether it is in the woods or at least you know where true north is.  

            I want you to pray for those people maybe in a way that you have never thought of before.  Pray that they will have God’s presence in their lives whatever that means.  We need it because, you see, our lives are a journey.  God calls us on to a journey and God calls us forth into a journey where God will encounter us.  You see God is not a passive God always just waiting for us to come to Him.  But the Lord is actively involved in seeking us out, helping us to understand our focus and reason for life.  In fact, Lent should not be a time just to give up.  Its okay to give up chocolate but you probably should have given that up a long time ago.  Let me encourage you to do something different, to see Lent as an opportunity to be transformed. 

            I want to tell you some stories.  One comes from the Bible.  The Bible is full of people who have different journeys.  And God impacts their journeys in a variety of ways.  The classic, the most foundational one though is a man named Abram.  Now you have to understand this is Abram who becomes Abraham.  And Abraham is the father of the faith of the three major faiths of the world—Islamic religion faith, Judaism, and Christianity.  Let’s read the words for God is calling Abram from a place of personal safety, comfortablilty.  I know where the street signs are.  I know who lives down the street.  I know what my neighborhood looks like.  And all of the sudden God calls Abram…well, let’s hear the words themselves: 

“The Lord said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people, your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.  I will make you a great nation and I will bless you.  I will make your name great and you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse.  And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”  (Not just those three major faiths)  So Abram left as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him.  Abram was 75 years old when he set out from Heron.  He took his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot, all of the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran and they set out for the land of Canaan and they arrived there.  Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh of Shechem.  At that time the Canaanites were in the land.  The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’  So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him.  From then he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east.  There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.  And Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.”  Genesis 12:1-9 

The compass that Abram was given was one of faith—trusting.  Abram didn’t know where he was going to end up.  Do any of us at the start of our journey of life know where we are going to end up?  And yet we go off sort of as if we are in charge once we get of an age and are able to be decision making and we kind of struggle a little bit with someone else trying to tell us what to do.  But we still strike out and begin to believe our journey is one where I am in charge. 

Well I’m going to tell you a journey about me.  And the famous line of an old comedian is, “I was born at a very early age.”  Okay, if you don’t get that one you probably won’t get the next one either.  I was born at a very early age.  Actually, though, I began my journey before I was born.  But the first look at this world and the light of this world took place on March 17, 1946.  Yeah, I’m 61 this year, don’t worry about it.  I was comfortable when I was rudely pushed into this world.  Well, my mother pushed me into this world but I guess she really didn’t have much to do to stop it either.  These things happen; you get pushed into a journey, pulled into it.  Abraham was really pushed out of his comfort zone into a life of faith not knowing where he was going to go.  But hearing God called, he responded and faith moved forward.  Starting on a new journey is like a birth.  The very physical birth that we had, but there are many steps along the way of our lives where our journey may take a new path or a new direction and it can be like a new birth.  But we still need to fall back upon the compass of God’s direction for our lives.   

I continued on my journey and I can remember one time and I think it was a hardware store where I came to a fork in the road and I learned a valuable lesson.  My Dad taught it to me in this way.  You see journey and decisions start quite early in our lives.  I saw this red truck on the shelf in the hardware store and I wanted it.  I don’t know how old I was, five or six; but unfortunately I went into a childlike approach to getting it and I pleaded and I cried.  I don’t think I fell on the floor and kicked, but I did make a scene I’m sure.  And finally Dad said, “Alright, I’ll get you that truck, but just so you know that was going to be your birthday present.”  Ah, devastation—I just lost my birthday present!  I was going to have my present but now I won’t have a surprise.  Lesson learned.  Don’t over anticipate; be patient.  You know, good things can come if you wait. 

 Or the first time I had a friend beyond my family connections, a new lesson to learn.  Or another one when I first chose to give something to someone else without expecting anything in return.  I can’t tell you when that happened, but I do know that is a valuable lesson to learn.  Choosing to enjoy the outdoors because God had blessed me with several opportunities to experience that.  And then there’s that moment when I accepted God’s love and God’s forgiveness—and that was a journey change for me also.  A road that I set out upon that I am still on, one of forgiveness and trust and faith in Jesus Christ, it happened at a particular moment.  But there was also after that the time when I had to come to a fork in the road and make a choice—do I cheat on this test because I was given a copy of the test in high school and I chose not to.  And others did.  And they were found out.  And they put a and b together and came up with c that I had turned them in which I had not.  And I was chased and harassed for a year—lesson learned.  Doing the right thing can sometimes have consequences even with God.  People don’t always appreciate you doing the right thing.  Choosing to go to Indiana Central College instead of some other place where I saw on the bulletin board a sign that I chose to go to Redbird Mission and work for the summer.  Another road taken.  And where I met a person named Joyce and we chose together, well eventually she did after I convinced her what I thought was a good arrangement for us.  It was only a couple of months.  And we’re on our journey now together; we have been for almost 39 years. 

Well, that journey then led to finishing college and seminary.  From seminary to Terra Haute Memorial, Terre Haute Memorial to Centerville, Centerville to Hagerstown to the Council Director, District Superintendency, Methodist Temple, the tornado and Grace United Methodist.  The two not necessarily identified with each other again, please.  One year ago though we came here to Franklin.  Another fork in the road, a decision that remind me as I have thought about this journey motif and the metaphor of God calling us forward and that life is a journey itself of Robert Frost’s famous poem which most of us know “the road not taken” that line.  But I want to read the whole thing to you.  Now I don’t know that Robert Frost had that in mind when he was thinking this.  God’s not mentioned directly.  But it is interesting, once you start on the journey with God and God helps you to see your journey differently on the road before you, you start to see God in places other people don’t.  So let’s listen to Robert Frost’s words again. 

THE ROAD LESS TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

     -- Robert Frost

            God is there in that journey.  God is in every human being’s journey whether they recognize it or not.  God calls us forth into this life.  God calls us along the road and there are many forks and decisions where we can take one or the other.  Or, as I felt, not just the fork in the road between two—sometimes it is three choices or more.  A busy intersection.  But still the choice has to be made and it is tempting for us to avoid those choices and think that if I just stop along this comfortable part of my journey where everything is going just right and I have no complaints.  We stop to smell the roses which is a good adage to do, but the other is to recognize that even when the stopping of that we may then turn and look back and regret another road we didn’t take, or sadness or remember a loss.  And I do think occasionally God tells us to stop.  Not just to smell the roses but stop and recognize that “I am with you”, God tells us.  Occasionally God does tell us in that stop and go that it is okay for the moment to grieve and know what you’ve lost.  But then we also, God says, remind you of what is still before you.  And in that presence we are given the opportunity to be still and know that God is God.  If we don’t learn anything else on the journey, that’s the most important, valuable lesson to take with us.

            But there is usually something God wants us to learn when we stop and take those short breaks or when we come to the point of choosing between the next road—and it is that God is there before us, beside us, behind us, leading and preparing, waiting for us, though, to call upon God.  Why God chose to give us freedom of choice, I don’t know.  But it makes all of the difference!  God will reach out and take you by your hand when you reach out for God.  Like Karen sang in the song, letting Jesus take you by the hand and walk along with you, particularly when times of trouble are there, and that’s when the journey really can slow down and become difficult.  But we must travel lightly on this road.  We can’t take all the luggage and baggage of past mistakes.  That’s why God says you are forgiven.  Because if we continue them, it just gets heavier and heavier until you can barely make any progress down the road of your life.  The Lord walks mostly silently beside you.  Very few on Abram’s experience, for God speaks directly in words that can clearly understand.  But I think most of the rest of the journey for Abram was one of silence and faith and trusting that he was going where God wanted him to go. 

            The one thing about this journey is that it can’t be so sad at times and truthful for us.  The sadness comes mostly because of our sense of loneliness.  Have you ever thought that?  Even when people you know and love are with you on that journey, you feel alone?  That’s why I like the book by John Steinbeck when I went through this blitz of reading books back in high school and college.  I think I read every book by John Steinbeck.  At one time I claimed I had.  I had them all.  But Travels with Charlie was a uniquely personal, delightful book.  Charlie’s a dog; and the story is traveling with this dog across country and experiencing, on that journey, the joys and heartaches and difficulties.  But I have to change that and I’d like to name my biography, Travels with God—not a dog, just the reverse if you switch the letters.  But God doesn’t have any Charlie, God just is God.  There is no other name that is appropriate.  God says to us, “I am, that’s all you need to know. Beyond that I know.  Trust me and faith.” 

            And this is not a lesser God that we can manipulate to do it our way.  This is not a God that we create on our own.  This God was there before we were made, was there at the beginning of our journey, will be with us throughout the whole journey, and when we come to the end of this roadway of this life, there is life still to come and God will be there also.  Not a lesser God, but the God who prepares the way so that in each point along that journey, God will encounter you with God’s grace.  That’s the purpose of the journey.

            There are rules for this road and journey that I would like to leave with you—sort of a summary.

1. Always remember that you start with God.  God starts with you. You have to learn that.  You have to be taught it through experience.  But start your journey, it always does, with God.
    

2. In God’s image, we are made for the purpose of God’s creation.  And we are made to be with God.  We at times, on this journey, may feel so alone we wonder where God is.  But trust me, in faith and truth God is always there.
    

3. We are created to seek God.  Not just to passively wait upon God to do something for us, but our journey along all that way is to seek God above all. 
    

4. When on a journey, always a journey to another place—another spiritual place, another physical place, another place of eternity.
    

5. Our journeys are always best taken not alone but with other people.  And that makes the joy of this journey in this life an additional plus.
    

6. Your journey and my journey has a purpose and it is an eternal one. 

            You need to know that you are continuing your journey.  When was the last time you were aware that God encountered you on that road?  Was it just yesterday or last year?  Does it take the crises of a tornado or the death of a loved one or a severe illness of your own life or the loss of a job or the birth of a grandson or a new joy and new anticipation?  What is it that triggers an awareness that God has encountered you, not passively waiting for you to create God out of your own mist, but God walking along with you in the image and fulfillment as we heard in the song of Jesus?  We are not just lone travelers, Robert Frost said, we are with God and God is with us.  And at times we may have to wonder where the road is going because we can’t see that far.  But we reach out and say, “Lord, where does this go?  I see a cross but I don’t know what it means.”  And the Lord takes our hand and says, “Come along, I am with you.  I am with you.” 

            So when we come to the two roads and they diverge and we have to make a choice, and we’ve journeyed along with God along that way, it makes choice a little easier because we know that we do not have to rely upon our own wit and wisdom and reason and experience.  But we can trust in prayer that God will be there providing the compass for our life to help us know the true north and what the next direction is we are to go. 

            I want us to take some time of prayer and meditation where you will think about the last decision you made where you thought God was present.  Or maybe you have one right now for yourself, or you are praying for someone you know who is, you can see they are coming to that fork and they are not sure which way to go.  Will you pray in this time of quietness that you’ll know that God has called you on this journey and God is with you and God will help you to make the right choice?  Whatever it may be, come to God in prayer and seek God’s wisdom and direction for He has called you forth and made you for reason and purpose to walk along with you in the journey of your life.  Let’s join together in prayer.  “Thank you, Jesus, that you walk the lonesome valley.  For you, you had to walk it by yourself so that you would know and understand as God what it means for us to walk our journeys.  And we thank you that you do not leave us alone but you are with us.  Like the two on the road to Emmaus not always recognizing you but you recognize us.  Each of us here today have our own personal journeys.  We have been counting the stories of them and there are more to come.  But may we leave from here today feeling your presence knowing that you are encountering us with your grace each step along the journey of our lives.  Thank you, Lord, thank you.  Amen.

E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman

[FrontPage Include Component]