THE ENDLESS HORIZON

I remember once when I was in high school I was walking home after football practice. The time change had taken place and it was already dust. As I strolled down the side of the road I looked ahead and this particular road stretched so far that I couldn’t see the end. I knew in reality it did end, but gazing at this two lane asphalt stripped line on both side by trees, it just created for me the illusion of being endless. And with the faint aura of the ebbing sundown highlighting the distance, it gave the image for me the impression of leading to some mystical and enchanted place. I only wish it really did.

There was a movie I saw as a kid that was years earlier about how this old man managed to trap death in this tree he could control so he was able to keep from dying. Death, being far more clever than the man imagined, seduced the old man’s grandson into the street where he was hit by a car. He gave the man the choice of letting him out of the tree to save the boys life, which also meant he would die or he could let the boy die and stay alive himself. Well, this movie was made at a time when grandparents were models of love so obviously the old man was willing to die himself in order to save his grandson.

How this relates to this subject is that at the end of the movie the old man does die, but you see him, able to walk again in the afterlife and strolling down a long endless road. It was an image of eternity that has always stuck with me just like that moment when I gazed down the road to what looked like eternity.

I have found the spiritual message in the midst of such endless horizons. They convey the reality that our own horizon of life is itself also endless. It passage from this world to the next.

At times though we do get far more engrossed in reaching some closer horizon. A goal or desire that consumes our thoughts and makes us forget the more important destination that is our future. It is so easy to get distracted.

We can easily become like that old man who tries to cling to life and make it the most important aspect of being. It is as if the endless horizon will somehow stay in the distance and never be reached if we just don’t look at it.

Yet, just as with the old man, how often it is that we can find what we fear or try to avoid thinking about it eternity will be so totally far more blessed and satisfying if we open our eyes and accept its reality.

Perhaps we can gaze a little more with clarity if we keep that divine map of promise as our source of inspiration and road map. It can be a joy when we are able to follow the directions that we know will lead us where is our intended destination.

May we always find the Lord’s light to shine upon our journey and let it guide us as only his spirit can lead. Then we shall know the endless horizon as a joy instead of a burden or place we grow weary of reaching.