Life on the tracks...

It's a well used metaphor, "the journey of life"... the idea that we are all travelling along, subject to the whims and winds of the road. Sometimes driving with cautious care, sometimes with relaxed enjoyment, sometimes with erratic recklessness and sometimes in lostness and confusion. It can feel a little scary... the uncertainty of not knowing what is ahead... of not knowing what is oncoming, of not trusting ourselves in the drivers seat, or of not trusting the other drivers around us.

Life can feel scary that way.

Last Wednesday, we took the kids on a trip on the Steam train for my Father-in-laws birthday. Steam trains are just like any other journey in many ways... the varying speed, the quiet chugging through glorious open countryside, the loud clatter through dark tunnels... they take you through all sorts of twists and turns, ups and downs, over bridges, through tunnels, high speed and slow motion.

And yet there's one significant difference when you're on a train.

You're on a track.

That means you have a destination, a direction, and an earthing.

And in many ways, as I've been reflecting, I've realised that is what journeying life as a christian is like. There are high days and low days, good days and bad days, days of flying through glorious freedom, and days of racketing through dark tunnels. And yet all the while, we have a destination, a direction, an earthing.

The ups and downs and ins and outs don't have to feel scary, because they are earthed in the sovereignty of God. Just like that train follows its tracks, we  can trust that life is following the tracks that God has laid out for us. And that brings an incredible peace and assurance when things feel a little rocky, or the tunnel feels neverending. The train won't de-rail. It might traverse through some pretty rough terrain, it might head underground for a while. But its held firm to those rails and won't leave them.

That assurance has been particularly precious to us in the past week or so. Knowing that we are held firm when old memories are stirred, and question marks hover again...

That we are never left to career off course... but always held tight, whatever the terrain, whoever the company, wherever we find ourselves.

Life on the tracks.