Standing within the immensity of the Beijing Airport, I was amazed by the modern and pristine atmosphere of the place.  Unlike 1983 at the Moscow Airport when I traveled with Baptists For Peace, there were no grimacing guards sizing me up, interfering with travelers of our group and searching through belongings to find literature they would prefer not enter the country.  No slogans of The Party hung in sheets of red, extolling the virtues of Communism. No icons of Lenin peering from the sides of buildings or standing statuesque.  The only picture of Mao I saw as on a beautiful piece of pottery in a glass case outside one of the many shops.  The airport was eerily quiet with few travelers that day.  Beijing was a mere way station on our way from Tokyo to Hong Kong.  But in that brief stop it became evident that capitalism had won.  Marx and his ideology is absent, abandoned. They may be Communists but the goal in China seems to be the accumulation of wealth.

The lessons of travel are so closely aligned to the journey of a spiritual life that reviewing them seems almost pointless.  We understand that we are journeying toward a destination in our lives and that prior to arrival, we will stop at stations designed for our refreshment and we will miss connections and get lost; we will experience life as a stranger in a narrow street ornamented by signs in a language unknown to us; that we will be dependent upon the grace and kindness of strangers; that in order to finish our journey, we will need to be determined and patient. The novelist Frederick Buechner has referred to our lives as a Sacred Journey in his novel by the same title.  He is right.  How might the world be different if we considered our lives a sacred journey and the lives of others as a sacred journey?

We are glad to be home. That too is a lesson learned along the flight path. With that last “ah” of landing one last time, we awaken to our own home, the familiar surroundings, the landmarks that guide us toward home. And then, entering the space we have configured and marked as our home, a physical relief joins the emotional release of entering our own space.  It should not escape our notice that in order to feel at home, we must know what it feels to be a stranger.  There is, for the Christian, a destination, a final goal and it is home but a home provided us by our Lord.  Maybe we should consider His words, especially as we pray our farewells and return our brother, Ed Yates, and our sister, Myrtle Johnson, to the Good Shepherd.  Christ said, “ In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”  [John 14:2-3]

Welcome home, faithful servants.  Fellow travellers, keep on keeping on.  For we are on a sacred journey and our destination is God.

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