A manner of traveling.

Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

--Margaret Lee Runbeck

I take the train to work. It might be my favorite part of the day, an excuse for my thoughts to slow down and settle, for one whole, protected hour.
Within that hour, these two truths have surfaced:


1. That time is a good gift.
2. That life proves truly miraculous when I slow down enough to get a good look at it.

Onboard, a sigh of preparation for work is released as the train pulls away from the platform at 7:21 AM and again at 5:41PM to chase down the sun.
Sometimes the continuum of days is dizzy and nauseating, like a cheap and spinning fair ride that I want off of.  But others days are a symphonic and lovely march, onward through the year.


Existing in a state of perpetual wonder is not something that humans do well. We're are too overstimulated and unimpressed to take in the glory of something as basic as "being."
We are simply too full to make room for the wonder. Full of agendas, full of emptiness, full of ourselves.



Oh Lord, God of our Fathers
This day, let it be known
That You Lord, are God of the present tense
Oh Lord, father of history
This day, let it be known
That you Lord, are present in our human events.
--Jon Foreman



The God of the present tense is in every moment, and when those moments are stolen for fears of the future, or regrets of the past, He is simply crowded out.


Taking a posture of boredom in these rare, in-between moments of travel is even more absurd. So much of life's"waiting time" could be assigned away as a petty inconvenience of adulthood, but the thanklessness of that perspective troubles me.


I will fight the apathy more, because God breathed one potently creative breath of life, just to make me "be." The world of my perception is far greater than the sum of a few predictable reactions in the universe. Everything around me, was a God-thought before it came to be, what we call so plainly "laws or theories" originated at the center of a being who calls himself the "I Am."


What a wonder. The weather is my favorite tangible reminder of this wild God I serve. I could spend hours marveling at the power of the storm or the tenderness of an afternoon downpour that suprised even the weatherman.
My minutes, my hours and seconds are all on loan. The 60 minutes to an hour, the 365 days for a year, the 100 years or under for my lifetime, all these things,will return to their true owner.


Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.


James 1:17 illustrates perfectly, the beauty of this continuum, a God who says that it is of His very essence and nature, to never change.


I guess riding the train makes me aware of my time as a gift. It burdens me with blessing to think of my Father's patient dispensation of freedom to humanity through time. Will we love or despise Him freely in the years yet to live, and in the end, what will our lives have to say? That we treasured Him more than gold and lingered in the moments slow, just to feel Him near?  Or did the days slip idly through our fingers? Forsaking His table of communion leaves little to speak for at the end.


Those who consider hell to be an unjust damnation of humanity would do well to reconsider. If the extravagant and costly sacrifice of Christ does not cause a yearning for Him to utterly consume our present moments, how much less appropriate would it be to demand the promise of His home beyond this earth? What a strange request that would be. Even the living God respects the spaces where he is not desired.  He takes no interest in prisoners, of that I am sure. But more certainly, He will take the  days of a servant with a deeply grateful heart.