I Am The Way (John 14:1-6)

Three photos from yesterday as I took a leisurely walk from my home to the Bukit Timah hill. This was the same path where the KTM railwayline formerly run; it looks so different now without the tracks and stones, and the crowd of people. In the tranquility of this morning, I meditated on a scripture verse:

Jesus said to him,

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6 . By these words, Jesus sets the life of faith in the language of journey. When Jesus was about to leave his disciples, he used the language of leaving and travelling to describe what was to happen to him, and subsequently to them too.

 

Our lives are mortal: However much we may trust in modern medicine to patch us up for a few more years. We travel from birth, through childhood and adolescene, on to adulthood, perhaps to marriage and family, and eventually to old age and death. BUT - and this is the heart of his message to them - the journeying doesn't stop then.

Across the dark waters of death, lies a promised land, and when we arrive there we shall discover that the world's saviour has "prepared a place for us". But before we arrive, there is the journey, and it is unlikely that anyone's path through life will be pain-free, much less 'roses, roses, all the way'.

As it was for the Hebrews, slogging their way across the inhospitable desert, so for us. There will be times of spiritual desert, setbacks and failures, doubts and fears. Yet through it all, if we have the eyes of faith to see it, the 'pillar of cloud' by day and the 'pillar of fire' by night will go with us, as it did with them. Jesus would not leave his disciples 'orphaned', he said.

The Israelites could only look forward, sometimes with fading faith, to the promise of a new land, rich in promise. Likewise, we can only look forward to the promise of a new life, where we shall "know God and enjoy him for ever".  

 

source: David Winter (2003) Hope in the Wilderness