Not Just a Dead End

 

It was not where I intended to run, several weeks ago, but tick-tock my time was scarce, and I had to cut out part of my usual running route to get back in time.  In an effort to shorten my course, instead of going around the big hill, I turned right at the fork and down the other side. A thousand shades of spring green greeted me. And then, when a gravel side path appeared, a sign designated my choice of a scenic loop or a dead end.  On this side of the park, blocked by heavily traveled roads, I surmised the dead end gravel path could not go far.  I still had time to explore a bit.  I always hope to make time to explore a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A dead end, even with its morbid label, still goes somewhere and back again. And unlike a loop, it provides two chances to observe what is there and what was missed the first time passing by.  A terminus point is already embedded, a time to turn around, like an ending to a chapter.  There and back again was the first title of Tolkien’s epic novel The Hobbit.  As with Bilbo, we can never predict the adventure that will happen, nor foresee what was not visible to us before.

A dead end road provides time to unravel tightly knotted thoughts, to find new connections,  sometimes just to think and pray and enjoy without having to be so practical.  Sometimes even the familiar breaks way to what is completely new and astonishing.

A dead end is just as scenic as a scenic path.  Yet we argue, “But it doesn’t go anywhere!”

No, it goes through.

And that is what matters.  The starting point is the ending place, but we are changed by the journey.

The greatest inventions in the world began with a whole list of dead ends.  We live with such limitations, always needing purpose or reason to our efforts, and subsequently losing the wonder and beauty of it all.

At times when least anticipated, I have discovered an unexpected trail through the expanse, that which finally gives me a sense of where I actually am, not lost after all.  Things I never knew connected, things I never realized before.  Where did that thought come from?  Perhaps giving God a little margin to get a word in edgewise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pursuit reveals hidden sacred tunnels that open up what we didn’t know.  And God's faithfulness ties it all together. 

“All who wander are not lost,” once said  J. R. R. Tolkien, who first invented another language and then wrote a story to go along with it, which we know as The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  He had no idea at the time how epic a story he was pursuing, nor even if it was a dead end.

Wander a bit.

How does that manifest itself today?  Ask God, and He will show one step, and then another.  Not necessarily a new path, but a new vision of the commonplace and immensity of Himself.

And find not just a dead end after all.

 

And I will lead the blind

in a way that they do not know,

in paths that they have not known,

I will guide them.

I will turn the darkness before them into light,

the rough places into level ground.

These are the things I do,

and I do not forsake them.

                   Isaiah 42. 16