Not Inside Yet

A writer I have been reading quoted a Welsh poet named R.S. Thomas in a section in which she discussed the Celtic tradition.  The three lines were,

       "You can come in
       You can come a long way...
       But you won't be inside."

And then Esther De Waal writes, "So I try to walk in reverence, taking off my shoes, remembering that this is holy ground, and having to accept that there is much that I shall never fully know and that may in the end be the one important gift of the Celts."  It is strange the way the journey with God has changed.  In the beginning I knew there was much to learn, but I was sure learning and growing was in my grasp.  And, after some time of walking had passed, I came to a place where I thought I had come to understanding.  But, now, after all these years when the journey is closer to ending than beginning, what I do not know and what I figure I will never know is staggering to consider.

 

It is indeed a strange thing to realize that the Mystery of the walk is greater than the ability to understand.  It would seem that by now I would be there, I would have arrived, or at least I would be farther along the road of figuring it out, but the further I walk the more it seems I do not know.  What a road it is we take back in the beginning.  It is no wonder that getting on it requires faith for the closer we get to the end, the more we must depend on faith to continue it.

 

Knowing may seem to be the goal to those who must be in control, but to walk with God is to come to the place of knowing only that the journey requires letting go.  Living with what cannot be known but only believed and trusted to be true is the way forward.  But, the most important part of the journey is the One who walks it with us.  As long as He is on the road beside us, or ahead of us, we can walk without knowing.  We can walk by faith.