How To Live The Best Adventure of All

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No more bending low to collect  treasures scattered free and wide across the leaf-lined paths.

 

No more pauses to stroke the soft emerald velvet growing on ancient tree-trunks. 

 

Just the echo of brittle branches giving way beneath our feet, the wistful cry of an owl willing itself awake.

I can’t believe we haven’t found the rock yet. 
Why didn’t we just take the right trail? Josh complained.

Hannah squeezed her little brother’s hand and tried to make peace.
But, Josh, we found so many treasures on this path. 

She waved her plastic bag filled with nature’s bounty and flashed our boy a forced a smile.

Who cares? Josh shot back, his tired toes kicking the dusty foliage beneath his feet.

 We just wasted all our time hiking around and around and now it’s getting dark.
And my feet just want to stand on the rock. 

I took my cranky one’s hand and thought of the family I’d met when I was teaching at a big yellow school house tucked in the shadow of the Austrian Alps…

The family had traveled the world and had come to work at the school where my teaching career had its start.

There were four of them- two parents and two kids- and they spoke the language of adventure.

They had taught students on four continents and had plans to step foot on the other three before their lives expired.

They had collected trinkets and treasure from the Orient and the tropics, had swum in the Mediterranean Sea and had climbed mountains in New Zealand.

But they had never found the Rock, had never met the One who had shaped the world they were exploring with zeal.

I will never forget their little children’s eyes–so blue and so empty– 
 the look of ones who had traveled the globe but never traveled the path to the Savior’s heart. 

I remember how the little boy had cried when his mommy spoke of his new school and the new language he would have to learn if he wanted to make friends in this country, too.

And how the little girl had climbed on my lap one day at lunch and asked “Where did you get your smile and why do your eyes sparkle like you’re laughing even when you’re not?”

How I wish I would have told her that my smile had to do with my feet, 
that the sparkle in my eyes came from my stance on the Rock.

I wish I’d pulled her close and told her of Jesus, the One who never changes, even when your address does.

I wish I’d introduced her to the One who speaks truth even when your language switches from year to year and your mind spins in constant confusion.

I wish I’d tucked her red-ribboned pigtails behind her ears and whispered words of life that day-
 Jesus loves you, this I know, for the Bible tells me so…. 

But I was still just finding my way back then, too; still searching for my own story worth telling.

I hadn’t yet learned that the greatest tales are etched on the Rock; hadn’t yet discovered that the grandest adventures are always launched from our knees.

I didn’t know then that the trails worth traveling always start and end with Jesus…

Joshua’s steps were slowing and my fingers were growing cold.

I wondered if that little girl had ever lingered beneath golden trees and inhaled the crisp scent of fallen leaves and splintered twigs. Wondered on what continent her feet strode now.

I stared at the timberline and wondered where we were, chided myself again for choosing the path to nowhere.

But then Hannah’s squeal spurred a sprint.

I think that’s the creek again, Mom! Now we can just start over and take the RIGHT trail.

And sure enough, I spied the bridge where it had all begun.

Can we please find the rock now? Joshua asked through chattering teeth.