Heart Tracks - Resurrection Road

6 Then Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had blessed his people in Judah by giving them good crops again. So Naomi and her daughters-in-law got ready to leave Moab to return to her homeland. 7 With her two daughters-in-law she set out from the place where she had been living, and they took the road that would lead them back to Judah. Ruth 1:6-7...."When you don't know where to begin and you're at the end of yourself, you get to be where all of God begins.....Sometimes, some things need to break all apart so that better things can be built......The way to feel the relief of a resurrection is to enter into the suffering of the Crucified." Ann Voskamp

"You've reached the end of the road." Most often, that's a statement of defeat and despair. Most often it's seen as final. There's no place to go from here. You can't go back, and you see no way forward. You've reached the end...of everything. This was how Naomi, the mother-in-law of Ruth saw it. Her husband was dead. So were her sons. For a woman of that day, the natural expectation would be a fast approaching death. Alone, forgotten, without hope. She saw it as the end of the road. Her daughter-in-law Ruth, and most importantly, her God, saw it differently. They had reached the end of their road of living in Moab, a place they were never to have been in to begin with. Now came the opportunity for the Father to reveal a new road, His road. The road that would lead them back to Judah, Naomi's home, and the land that would become Ruth's as well. At the end of every road that we've chosen to walk, sometimes in rebellion, other times in deception, most times in foolishness, lies a road to be revealed. The road that will lead us home. Home to our true place in Him. To get there though, we do have to reach an end. That's the end of ourselves. Of our trust in ourselves, and others, and all that is not Him in this life. The end of walking roads that lead nowhere but to loss, and if kept to, the loss of our very soul. His road will always lead to the cross, and our flesh will do anything to avoid it. For on that road it must die. It's His Resurrection Road, the Road Of Life. To walk that road means that fleshly self reliance must die, and that death is painful. But it's death, by way of the cross, is the open door to our way home.

Life is really a series of "end of the roads." None are easy, and all are scary. They always entail loss. There is always upheaval. Everything in our world gets shaken, and where we once thought we had many roads to choose from, there are now none. None that we can see. It's here where we are challenged to believe that there is one before us that is unseen. It's the road that leads us home, to Him. Natural eyes, depending on logic, reason, circumstances, and intellect, will never see it. It can only be discerned by spiritual eyes, that refuse to believe the whispered lies of the enemy, and the conditions he works through, and trusts in what the Father says is there. And what is there is Himself. And a road not often taken, because it can only be seen through the eyes of surrender.

I've reached a number of "end of the roads" in my life. Places where my future appeared to be erased. The end of the road of my life without Him, where in His mercy and grace, He opened my eyes to see the road I never knew was there. The road that brought me to Him. The end of the road of my marriage and seeming end of ministry. A road that many in the church said I would find no way off of. He was there as well. And the road that led nowhere, now led to a place I couldn't see, but His heart told me was before me. There have been more. All dark. All filled with the unknown. All containing one great question; would I dare to believe that He was there? Would I believe that what seemed to be the end, was instead the beginning. The beginning of a new road and journey with Him. A journey that would surely contain another end of the road somewhere, but when it was reached, would lead to another open road with Him. The road that always leads me home.

If you're not yet at the end of the road, you will be. What will you do there? Try to dig out a new one? You can't. All the rubble around it will eventually fall in upon you. Just give up and be buried there? If you're looking to yourself or another, that's sure to be your eventual end. Or, will you allow Him to open your eyes to see the "road less traveled." The road that leads you Home. To Him. To Life. To a new beginning. Take it from a fellow traveler. It's there. He's there. Take that road, the Resurrection Road. All the way home.

Blessings,
Pastor O