“When everything is ready, I will come and get you so that you will always be with Me where I am.  And you know the way to where I am going.”  (John 14: 3-4)

The context of this opening Scripture is Jesus sharing with the disciples about the journey He is about to take.  He begins by exhorting them to trust in God and therefore in His message. He encourages them to think of their lives in eternal rather than temporal terms.  

Finally, after conveying the urgency of the journey ahead of them – He “flips” their conventional understanding of the mission.  Up to this moment, you could argue that their relationship has been largely “student/teacher.”  The disciples job was to take in new information Jesus was imparting about the Way to spiritual life, seek to understand it, and then apply it to their own understanding of and relationship to God and others.  

In some sense you could say He had been teaching them how to think their way into spiritual living.  Now, Jesus says in essence: “You already have what you need.”  Your job is now to live out that transformed thinking.  This tends to be how our lives work.  Knowledge directs our initial experience of life, and our experience of life refines our comprehension of what we thought we knew.  This is what I think this passage in Divine Providence is getting at:

“[The angels have] a knowledge of the way from walking in it and a walking in the way from the knowledge of it.”   (DP 60)

Its interesting then, that immediately following this Thomas says: “No we don’t know Lord!”  It often feels that way in life, doesn’t it?  We’ve had all this information imparted to us that we think we’ve learned, and then we try to apply it to the daily challenges of life in this world – and become acutely aware of what we don’t know.  It's a state the Lord can and does work with in us – probably most effectively.

In the process of learning that we would be moving to Tucson, our family’s reaction was generally excited.   We were excited about this new place we would be coming to, about the new group we would be serving, about the new experiences that awaited us.  But the more it sunk in, it also started to feel daunting to us.

Our strategy for dealing with this was to go back to basics.  We took out a world map.  We began to learn and talk more about what that part of the world (in heritage and culture) was like versus our experience of life where we were (England).  We grew hungry to understand more about the history, culture, and way of life in what would become our new home.  And we knew that just because we were studying what we could about the distinctions, there would be no substitute for actually experiencing the place – meeting the people, smelling the smells, walking the land – actually observing and experiencing this new life.

A favorite passage for my grandfather was:  

I once talked with some spirits who had just arrived from the world about the state of eternal life. I emphasized the fact that it is important to know who the lord of a kingdom is, what the government is like, and what the forms of government are. It is the same when people are visiting a foreign country in this world. Nothing is more critical for them than to know who the king is and what his character is, what the government is like, and a great many more details about the nation. How much more important must this be in the kingdom where they are going to live forever!  (HH 406)

I think it was one of his favorite passages because of that last sentence.  The process our family has been going through is a great reminder of the process we all need to go through in preparation for our spiritual life.  The Word teaches us about what’s waiting for us all!  It gives a sense of purpose and direction to this life that I don’t think we could ever have the same way if we didn’t view our lives in this world as preparation for the next.  

You and I are preparing for the greatest journey of our lives.  May we be hungry to learn who the King of heaven is, what His character is, how He governs our lives (and to what end).  And as we take in that truth, hold it in humility.  The more we ask ourselves in our time with the Lord in the Word – “what does this have to do with loving God and serving my neighbor?” – the more I believe we’ll be given enlightenment about how to apply it to our own state and stage of life.  As we do that, our experience of this life will become more heavenly.  And that heavenly experience will keep expanding our understanding of what to do with what we’re learning. 

As it does, may we rest in the thought that we are wonderfully well cared for, come to trust that the Lord loves and is leading each one of us through all our experiences in life (in terms what we learn and how we grow from them), and believe that if we are willing to be led - we will come to know in heart the Way of Love and walk the path to heaven.

Love and Peace,

Ethan