The Direction We Are Moving

Today’s message was written by Dial Hope found, the Rev. Dr. Roger Kunkel.

Listen carefully to these words from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and think of the last few words of it. “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Friend of Dial Hope, it would be a shock to learn at the end of life that we “had not lived.” But we will come to such a discovery, that we have missed life in its highest sense, “the life which is life indeed,” if we have not had the high experience of knowing God through Jesus Christ and becoming his disciple. That is the highest prize that life has to offer. 

The late Ed Safford shared this quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving! To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it – but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.”

Let us pray: O God, how great Thou art! Walk with us day by day. By your grace enable us to see possibilities rather than problems, windows of opportunity rather than closed doors, persons rather than things, life rather than mere existence. In Jesus’ name, who came not to make life easy, but to make us equal for life. Amen.