All Roads Lead

In all of human history (though I can’t prove it because my history is so short) people have been beckoned to the road. There is something written into our soul’s DNA that makes us long to go somewhere- somewhere else. There will be people who won’t actually go somewhere else, but they will  still long for it and find some mild satisfaction in reading adventure stories, watching the Amazing Race, or getting excited about a postcard from the crazy friend who went backpacking through Asia.

One way or another, we all want to go.

Our small tribe stopped about an hour into Oregon in Baker City to check out the Oregon Trail museum. For a guy who loved playing the Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe in elementary school, this was kind of a dream come true. It was thinking about those long-suffering travelers who walked in the footsteps pf Lewis and Clark’s expedition to explore the Oregon Territory that drove me to read all I could about the Oregon Trail in National Geographics and library books. 

While others were outside playing and learning to interact with humans, I was reading about long-dead people whose lives expressed a primal longing to leave what was familiar and go to what was seen as a Promised Land. They weren’t looking for milk and honey, but gold and 640 acres of land would suffice.

This is what is on my mind as we went to the museum that rested on a large hill next to- get this- a main artery of the Oregon Trail! We got to not only learn about these intrepid pioneers, but we actually got to walk where they walked. Our feet walked in the ruts left by teams of oxen and young families chasing their dream.

They didn’t know where they were going, but they were compelled to get there.

The similarities of their trek and our was not lost on us. Neither were the differences. The deep reasons why we are traveling and why they traveled may have been different in some substantial ways, but one thing is the same: we can’t not go. Our souls’ desire is always out there somewhere.

And even when we find it, we still want to walk the path deeper into it.

I could make reference to Abraham leaving home and going where the LORD sent him. Talking about that faith would fit. I could make reference to Moses, too, who kept leaving his home (once by necessity, the other by calling) in order to do what he was compelled to do by faith. Ultimately, I could reference Jesus who sojourned among us, leaving his riches in glory to be marginalized by those who borrow power from him.

But, what comes to mind the most is Psalm 16:11. Adrienne read Psalm 16 to us in the car as we drove and I needed to be reminded of it. Our deepest primal longing is not to see where the grass might actually be greener, but to the source of the desire to see green grass. Somehow, at the end of all of our longings is not soft St. Augustine under our feet, or acres of land in our name, but The Way before our faces:

“You make known to me the path of life;

in your presence there is fullness of joy;

at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Psalm 16:11

I risked dying of video game dysentary as a 5th grader because, somehow, I longed for traveling a path that brings life. Now, I am learning, that it isn’t as much about going (as important as that can be) as much as it is knowing the One who put the wanderlust in my heart that can only be satisfied by him.