Journey's End

By Mark Bacolod

The final hours of a journey are always the most reflective for me. This month I've spent hours reflecting on how my founding story has impact on the problem(s) I want to work on for His Kingdom.

How can "my" Journey take part in the broader story of a transformed world?

How can my founding story change, impact and/or influence the solution(s) I think are needed?

Questions have popped up like, "How could God possibly use "my" story?

When you're at a journey's end you try to reflect and stay close to the moments and memories you've experienced, thinking about the return to normal life and wondering how you've lived differently in light of the time you've spent and how that time has shaped your journey.

But what about the moments where you don't see or understand how could use you? Those moments where God wrote the story you didn't want? Those moments where you question your journey's end?

This month has been a month of questioning what my journey's end with Changemakers will look like and what it currently looks like. The same same question haunts me: How can God possibly use my founding story to change, impact or influence a solution for social change?

The reality is that when every day feels like an insurmountable struggle to find the solution and the details of the present are all-consuming - It's impossible to imagine anything else is happening. How do you fight that feeling of helplessness and hopelessness and that thought that "You can't see how God can work in any of it?"

Then it dawned on me...What if the confusion and doubt I'm facing is because I'm in the "middle" of the journey?! In the midst of doubt, We tend to focus on what's missing, Not on the master's hand. What I've been challenged with is perspective (God's), purpose (God's), planning (His, not mine).

What if I'm in the middle of the journey, not at the journey's end?!

Romans 4:17 says, "That He gives life to the dead. That he calls into existence things that DO NOT exist."

He is the author orchestrating the tiniest details for our final good. What if the purpose of the pain, the confusion in the midst of the story is to build the faith and confidence you NEED the midst of God's GREATER purpose in your story: To build Christ Likeness in you that attracts the lost who don't know HIM.

The question then changes: No longer is it "What am I doing or What have I done" BUT "What is Christ doing and Who am I becoming?"

The trial is the crown. And the moment in question is God waiting and asking "Will He (or She) BE the son or daughter or Christ God sees us to be because of Christ. It's a question of commitment. A question of perseverance to your journey's end.

He writes and brings you to moments, tests, opportunities (disguised as tragedy and uncertainty) to expose the FRUITS of the spirit in your life so that at Journey's end you'll believe, in confidence what He says in Proverbs 37: 4-7 -

Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.

COMMIT your way to the Lord;
trust in him and he will do this:
He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,
your vindication like the noonday sun.

Be still before the Lord
and wait patiently for him


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