Getting the Most Out of Your Journey - Genesis 12: 1-9 - June 8, 2008 - Cicero United Methodist Church - Everett J. Bassett

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We're coming soon into vacation season for many families, and people are preparing for summer trips. Thanks to high gas prices, the trips might not be as long as before, but all the more important to be wise travelers. Here and there, in vacation magazines and Web-sites, and the travel section of the newspaper, you'll see suggestions for getting the most out of your trip - rules for the road. These cover everything from what to pack to how to shop, and so on. For example, a good tip I saw recently was, "Before you leave, lay out how many clothes you think you'll need, and how much money you think you'll need. Then take half the clothes and twice the money." A good tip for the trip.

Today I want to talk about getting the most out of your journey. But, as you can guess, I'm not talking about your camping trip this summer - I'm talking about the journey you and I are on from the day we are born to the day we die, and even beyond. I'm talking about journeying through this life with God, and what it takes to do it well. And for guides, I'm going to look to two of the great travelers of all time - Abraham and Sarah. Our Old Testament lesson in Genesis 12 tells us about how their trip began, and what a trip it was! This morning I'd like to gather up some of the rules that made their journey one that not only blessed them, but blessed the whole human race. If you and I could get to the end of our journeys and say that we have been blessed, and others around us have been blessed, then surely we will have journeyed successfully. So what would the rules for the road be for such a journey?

The first rule, I believe, is Listen. That may seem like a strange beginning for a journey - wouldn't it rather be, Pack, or Research, or Reserve? But I believe that the great journey for Abraham and Sarah began with listening. Genesis 12 begins with these words: "Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country ... '" What is unspoken there is that Abram was listening for God. Abram was not at a point in life when you would expect he was sitting around for the next new adventure. A twenty year old might be thinking, "What am I going to do with my life? Where can I travel? Where am I going to live?" and so on. But Abram was 75 years old; he had lived a long, settled life. I'm going to guess that he wasn't sitting around thinking, "I'd love to hop on a camel and move everything 500 miles." But he must have been tuned in to God. Because when the most outrageous idea he'd heard for a while came into his head, he knew it was God speaking. I remember reading of Mother Teresa, in the latter part of her life, when she was asked what the next steps would be, and she responded, "The next step is to listen."

And we are not very good at that. When a friend is pouring out his or her heart to us, we are more likely to be thinking about how we can respond, or how we can solve the problem, or what we can get up and do for this person. And more often than not, what that person really needs at the moment is a good listener. A good listener is a rare thing. And in the same way, we expect God to catch us on the fly. We want to know what God's will is, but we rarely sit still and just wait for it. That's where Abram began.

Another rule for the road is to trust. Trust is absolutely required for a successful journey, first of all, because you just can't anticipate everything. Abram didn't even know where he was going. What God said to him was, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." God might as well have said, "Let go of everything you've ever known - country, family, security - step out in faith on a journey to a place you can't even see." Can't you hear Abram sitting at a family gathering with his brothers and sisters and nieces and grandchildren and saying, "I have an announcement to make. I've decided to pack up everything I own, gather my wife Sarai and our household, and leave." "Leave? Leave for where?" "I don't know yet." "But.... you're 75 years old. You don't just pick up and go like someone just starting out. Where will we mail your Social Security check?" "I don't know. I only know God is going to show me the path." How far along in that conversation are the words, "Are you crazy!?" But Abram trusted God to guide the journey.

I don't know just when it happened, but somewhere along the line, America changed from a land of immigrant people who ventured out into unknown territory, into a land of people who want every possibility guaranteed, secured, insured, anticipated, and nailed down. We want life with an extended warranty - no surprises. The problem is, that isn't living. The best of life doesn't follow the plan. The best of life doesn't yield to human control. It's somewhere in the unknown. But if we travel with God, that's okay.

Life is unpredictable. It's like the young woman who went into the print shop and asked if she could make a couple changes on her wedding invitations. "Sure," said the printer. "What would you like to change?" "Well," she said, "I have a different church, a different day, and a different guy." Sometimes the journey shifts dramatically on us. Quite often, those shifts are the best part of the trip. When Sharon and I have traveled, we set up some things in advance. We reserve some things, anticipate some things - but almost always the best things about the trip - the things we remember the most - are the totally serendipitous things. The unexpected blessings along the way.

And so, the third tip for the road from Abram and Sarai is to take time to celebrate. Celebrate is the word I use to represent the two times in our scripture lesson when Abram stopped and built an altar to the Lord. There was much about this journey that must have been a hardship. The uncertainty; the idea of being a stranger in each land they passed through; the logistics of moving everything you own; Again, the challenge of doing this at this stage of their lives - we read about all of those things in the stories that follow in the book of Genesis. Yet despite all of these struggles, the story of Abram is a story of great, great blessing. From our perspective, the blessing is wide and powerful l- through Abram and Sarai, God was beginning a majestic plan of salvation that would reach its great moment when Jesus, a son of Abraham, was born into this world to save us from our sins on the cross. That's the great story that is beginning here in Abram's journey.

But Abram couldn't see all of that. All he knew was that he had listened for God, and then obeyed God in trust, and was promised in the middle of the hard journey of life that his faithfulness would be a blessing. And that was enough for Abram. And so he stopped and he built altars to celebrate God's goodness.

We need to learn to stop and celebrate. The journalist Charles Kuralt, who liked to take Americans off the beaten path, once said, "Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to drive coast to coast and not see anything." Isn't that the truth? Isn't our whole lifestyle blinding us to what is around us? Everyone is concerned about gas prices, and saving as much energy as possible. But of all the various suggestions about alternate fuels and tax breaks and more drilling and economy cars and so on, one of the most significant things we could do to save on our gas budget is one of the least likely to happen - and that is to slow down. For anything I've read, the biggest impact we can have on our gas bills, other than to stop driving altogether, is to slow down to 55 miles per hour. I'm going to guess that that is not going to happen. We are geared up to get to our destinations as fast as we can. That's not the kind of journey Abram was on. His was a slow winding journey with intentional stops to appreciate the blessings of life.

The columnist Alice Steinbach, reflecting back on a long life, wrote, "What would I have done differently in my 20s and 30s if I had known then what I know now? For one thing, I would have laughed more; seen more Laurel and Hardy movies. And I would have grieved less. I would have understood earlier that not all losses are permanent and that some things lost were not worth keeping. I would have taken more time to note the changing seasons. ('Can you believe it?' an elderly friend asked me one spring day. 'Can you believe that even if I live to be a hundred, I will see all this only 100 times?') I would have been more daring...I would have understood sooner how profoundly satisfying the ordinary transactions of daily life can be: the perfect cup of morning coffee; the son shouting down 'Good night!' from his room; the ginger-colored cat caught napping in a triangle of sunlight."

That's wisdom for the road. That's about getting the most out of the journey. I don't know about you, but I get tired of the race; tired of never feeling like there's enough time; tired of my journey feeling rushed; hectic; noisy. When did it become a law to see every sight? to own every gadget? to secure every step, every moment, every plan? to know and control every destination? to never let a child be bored long enough for imagination to kick in? to outdo each other in titles and awards and possessions and status symbols?

There's another way. There's another journey. And great spiritual people like Abram and Sarai hold it in front of us. And it's not a secret. It doesn't require special training or boot camp or new math. It's about stopping and listening for God's voice; trusting God enough to step out toward the unknown; and building altars of celebration along the way. Because the legacy of millions of travelers is this: even though there may be setbacks, disappointments, unexpected curves along the way - those who travel with God are blessed deeply. There is a beautiful land ahead. And whether we ever quite see it or whether our role is to pave the way for others - the promise is more than worth the journey.