Starting the Journey

Starting the Journey

I started the journey of life early… Didn’t we all? I did not ask to be here, at least not that I can remember, but there I was, full or vim and vigor and ready to take on the world and make my mark. That was until I was in junior high school and was dumped by the loveliest girl in class for one of my friends. Then, I was not so sure of life and certainly not of myself. Experiencing ‘dumb and ugly’ is not usually good on one’s self confidence.

But that failure did not last forever and I was off again, running headlong down the road, certain of all things, and ready to tell the world how having a grasp of all knowledge can change your life, particularly if they were to gain that knowledge from me. It is wonderful to be 16 and omniscient. But little by little it did not last. The road ahead was nothing if not a sculpting tool, by which the Master Potter took great pains to reduce the volume of my knowledge and replace it with a growing sense of weakness and wisdom.

Potters are like that. They are a cruel sort, given to cutting and shaping and pressing their object into whatever it is that they are after, without so much as a word of consultation with the clay. I have never understood what it was in me that that was so displeasing that I should be so horribly handled and miserably fashioned. Certainly there was nothing wrong with the original lump, or so it seemed at the time.

But now I am old and in the twilight of my years I understand that I did not understand nor do I yet understand. Well, I do understand that the sum total of all knowledge has left me, somewhere on the road, and I am left with the sure certainty that I know very little about the universe, the God who created it, and me. What I do know is that I know God in a greater sense than ever before and yet I understand little of the unfathomable height and depth of what God is. To some degree, He is yet unknowable by means of human ingenuity.

It is that simple fact that encompasses all that I understand now, as the road winds more erratically and more upward. I do not and cannot know God in the totality of what He is, and yet, He has given me a little piece of Himself to hold and to be with. His grace has made me less over time, but I am sure, more also. I also understand that the crooks in the road should never invite one to cut their own path through the woods and take the short cut that is all too often so obvious. I’ve taken so many of them and have the scars to prove it. And the surface of the road needs no improving on my part. It is quite adequate to the journey. Just keep moving, unless of course you need to set at the next bridge and drink from the water, or dangle your feet into it for a spell. None of these things will slow you down, nor defeat the objective of the journey. For you see, it is not about the destination and the arrival, but about the work that is going on in and on you! It is about the shaping of the Master to create something of beauty.

No, I would certainly not compare my appearance these days to that of the younger me, or to any one of today’s young people entering the path. No, age has a way of taking from us our attractiveness and yet, not really; for in that transition from knowing all things to knowing nothing, is also the certainty that the road has worked something of wonder that can never be accomplished without walking down it.

There are others who have been down the same path and who have made the transition with me. They are family and friends who have put up with my antics and loved me none-the-less. They have been the instruments that God has used to shape me and to make me. They may not know it, but they have saved my life from one of being but a lump of mud to being what God intended. I am still not sure what that final form is, and yet, am content to never know. It is not for me to know for it is not made for me but from me. That is the wonder of the path… I get to enjoy the journey but the Potter still creates the purpose.

Linda has walked this entire path with me, almost from the beginning. Although she has accompanied me on my journey, it has also been but a parallel journey for her. She has been shaped and changed and altered in so many subtle ways, and yet, I can see in her, what I cannot see in myself. I see the work of the Potter and the transition from the lump of clay at the beginning to something far more valuable and yes, far more beautiful, in the end! Age takes so much from us, and yet it is giving also so much to us that we cannot comprehend, until we walk for this path into the next…. In Him!

Pastor Dave

It is truly a long road...

I am not sure how I got here. I suppose it has less to do with me than with many other factors. You see, my parents have more to do with it than I did, really. They decided to have a child and I ended up being the end result.

Now that is not a disclaimer as to responsibility for my life and what I have done with it, but it does speak of some limits to that responsibility. I mean, I can only work with what they provided for me and that has limitations. My critics will of course agree delightedly with this but my creditors will want me to take full responsibility for my being here.

Well, by whatever means life is given to us or forced upon us, as the case may be, we are all here in the same state: Searching for significance and identity, or so we are told, although I search far less these days than when I was young. You see, in a few days I will be celebrating my 70th birthday, or should I be consoling myself?

In any event, I have put a few miles on this old body and enjoyed some challenges, many of which I would love to share with you if you can handle another volume like War and Peace. OK, I shall not attempt it.

For oh so many years I spent little time looking at the past, driven so clearly to accomplish those things that would define my existence and affect my world. Now, I am far more able to relish the present and to enjoy the memories of life as it was experienced without the need to make a mark on it. You see, somewhere on the road of life, the recognition came that I made far fewer changes in my world than I decided to and was changed instead by the road, myself. Somehow, the journey got in the way of the destination and the simple cultivation of the garden of life brought sufficient fruit to satisfy the hunger for life beyond the parameters that were given to me. I am a very fortunate man.

There remains some things to do yet, however. I must find those things in me that are yet assumed illusions of reality and replace them with truth. Unlearning is one of the most important parts of life. We all find it so easy to assimilate our context without question and to drive headlong into life with certainty as to what is true and what is real. It is a golden moment indeed when we stop long enough to challenge our assumptions, look again at the illusions surrounding us and to be willing to allow our world to be reshaped by revelation. This is my journey these days. The journey or rethinking the journey of the past and of coming to know God, myself and my world through the matrix of new vision.

If you would like to, please join me. Slightly ahead and to the right is a door of opening, ready to be explored. Some times it is the road less traveled. Sometimes it is just another candle jammed into a cake, but whose illumination drive us to great delight. Care to take a walk...

Dave Fritsche