Summer travels

Each and every time, without fail, that I travel the highways in this part of the country, I think about those who traveled these parts long before asphalt and motorized vehicles.  Specifically I wonder about those who moved across these vast spaces of rock, scrub brush, and canyons with every piece of themselves and their lives stored in a wagon. I wonder what drove them forward when each peak conquered revealed another treacherous and seemingly unending path.   Even in the comfort of an temperature controlled chariot moving at speed on smooth roads and over safe bridges, I can get impatient as the destiny seems always out of reach and always over one more pass.  Each and every time I wonder what it was that enabled them to get up each and every day and put one more days worth of life and trial and labor behind them.  Over these next several weeks that Common Table gathers in community we will be immersed in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, visiting and revisiting those "ancients" who were commended for the faith that kept them moving but ultimately didn't get them to "the promise".  My prayer is that is will encourage us to look intently at our own journeys and consider how we might develop a faith that continues to move us forward.