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From Eden to Eternity
By David G. Duggan
Special to Virtueonline
www.virtueonline.org
July 21, 2014
I attended my college’s 40th reunion last month. It was the first time I’d returned to that Edenic New England campus in nearly four decades, and as readers of my book “Glimpses of Grace, Reflections of a Life in Christ” might recall, college was not the educational bonanza that I’m sure my parents hoped they were paying for. Having passed into eternity, my parents will never be able to tell me whether they were disappointed by my wastrel college pursuits. I can only hope that from their perspective, they can see that their investment in my late adolescent development was not a complete waste.
People and places change over 40 years, which curiously is the span of time that the Israelites spent in the Sinai wilderness before being led into the land of milk and honey. New buildings replace obsolete structures, hair falls out or appears in unwanted places, muscles sag and sinews tighten. I can’t say why God had His people roam for 40 years before they were permitted to return to the land of their forefathers, but perhaps He knew that a span of two generations was necessary to provide perspective: it’s not too long that people forget what they were doing in their youth, and it’s not too recent that the ultimate aim of our lives is overlooked.
A staple of reunions is a service of remembrance of those who did not live to see that day. About 10 percent of my class has passed on and the pace is of course accelerating. I knew only a few of those who had died, but each had spent their entry to adulthood at a place where I had. Whether I will see my classmates or my parents after my earthly passage is over I have no idea. But silently or aloud, their presence on my path has given me the strength to continue toward the end of eternal life.
From the scriptural accounts, Jesus never spent too long in any one place, and the Gospels are replete with His travels. His principal injunctions to His followers were also couched in metaphors from the journey: “Try to enter through the narrow gate,” “Go and make disciples of all nations,” “Come with me to a quiet place and get some rest,” “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that town.” By associating our earthly journey with our heavenly destination, Jesus taught that we are but sojourners here, yearning for a permanent home with our Heavenly Father.
Forty years is a long time to be absent from a place that formed a good part of what I have become. But it is not too long that I have forgotten how God found me on that New England campus, and never let me stray too far from His Word and Sacraments.
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