Eternal life will be such joy on the eternal footpath, if only I can invest a little time and patience into the construction of the thing for the few short days of earthly life that I have been given by God…
The other day – quite out of the blue – construction workers arrived at the road that intersects our quiet suburban street, and they brought their trucks and their tools and their supplies. And over the course of three or four days, these works laid literally build a new footpath along the verge of that road…
Now, my husband tells me that we received a notice about this in the mail some weeks before, and my children tell me that they had been hearing the trucks all morning even though we could not see them from our home, but for me the whole experience was unexpected.
There was a team of about twenty people, some driving excavators, some wielding shovels, others holding up “Stop” or “Slow” signs. There were others directing traffic, and others pouring concrete and smoothing it out.
There were delays to the traffic in the area as the road was blocked by incoming and outgoing trucks. There was additional noise for some time and there was also the sheer scope of the job, which entailed concreting a footpath along the entire left hand side of a very very long street.
My children spoke proudly of this project in the days after it was completed. They considered it “their” footpath. They told me that someone must have seen them walking home from school one day and wished to make life easier for them and make their walk more comfortable, and so they had decided to build a footpath just for them. I did not correct this assumption because it is a fact that many children did walk home from school along that street, and because of the state of the verge many of them walked on the road rather than on the footpath. And so, it was in fact, quite possible in the interests of the school children that this footpath had been constructed.
But I have been thinking about that today because the construction of the footpath reminds me of God Himself…
You see, just as the council warned us of the work that was going to be done and the children heard the noises in the morning, so too does God send us signs of Life Eternal. And if people are aware and conscious and concentrating, they are more likely to be able to “see” or “understand” what is coming. However, if people do not pay attention to those important things, then they – as I did on the day the footpath was being built – are shocked and baffled by the situation at hand.
And just as there is some inconvenience in preparing for the finished footpath – in building it – so too is there suffering and sacrifice associated with the preparation for eternal life. And just as there were some twenty people working on the construction of the thing, so too are there Angels and Saints and the Whole Host of Heaven who are the Communion of Saints devoted to helping me for my redemption…
And that is not all. Just as my children assumed that the footpath was constructed just for them, so too must I assume that eternal life is waiting just for me. Because God – my Beloved – makes all things Good – just for me. And just as the walk home is so much easier on a constructed concrete footpath, eternal life will be such joy on the eternal footpath, if only I can invest a little time and patience into the construction of the thing for the few short days of earthly life that I have been given by God…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.