What is it with the children of Israel? I’ve pondered that question many times wondering how one could possibly mess up what would seem to be the easy part. All they had to do was trust and have faith in God. God had orchestrated all the other details for them. Yet, after 400 years spent in captivity crying out for God to save them, they ended up wandering aimlessly for 40 more years while traveling to their promised land.

While it’s easy to detail every failure they had, if we are honest with our own life, we see that we oftentimes we are our own worst enemy on our travels from the journey to the destination.

Several weeks ago, our family planned a quick getaway for hopefully a few days of downtime and relaxation. As with every destination there is a seemingly mundane part of the journey. For us, it is the airport process. We love to travel, and usually everything goes off without a hitch, but this last trip we were not so lucky. Before we even headed to the airport, our flight had been delayed 3 times. By the time we reached the airport, the flight originally set for 9:00 pm had been delayed until 12:30 am. We contemplated sitting around in an empty airport for 3 more hours and it didn’t seem appealing to any of us, so we did what any normal family would do in a time of crisis… we found a fast-food drive thru! As we entered back into the airport at 10:30 pm, to our dismay we found out (along with several others) that TSA had closed for the night and that we could not get to the gate. The only alternative was catch the

next flight out. After much aggravation, and very little sleep, we caught the morning flight, and finally arrived at our destination with the mindset that we would NEVER get ourselves into that type of situation again! Famous last words.

If we thought the first leg of the journey was strained, we had no idea what disasters would confront the journey back home. Thinking we had plenty of time, we picked a place for lunch only to realize that we had better pick up the pace just in case something happened again. Seemingly there was a problem at every turn. The traffic was bad, twice I missed the address for the rental car drop off. The satellite bus was slow in getting us to the airport and the lines were extremely long going through the safety check. How we made it to the gate and got buckled into our seats, I have no idea. Finally, ready to get home and relax! Not so fast. Just like that everyone was instructed to deboard the plane for some unknown reason, and we were delayed again.

Well, as you learned before, I don’t like just sitting around doing nothing, so I get my mind set that I must have this certain type of coffee before boarding. Against my wife’s better judgement, I proceeded to fulfil this urge. We checked the destination screen again confirming that our flight was still set to leave at 7:45pm. Plenty of time to get back home and get a good night’s rest before church the next day. Coffee in hand, I return to the gate.  Much to our horror, we found out that not only had they boarded the plane early, but the plane had already left. Insert instant panic!

We literally are going to relive what 4 days before we promised would never happen to us again. Here we are again, trying to find a place to sleep a few hours before starting the process all over again.

We had only the clothes on our back. The luggage didn’t have my same appetite for coffee and was calmly flying back to Cleveland at that moment. Luckily, the next morning flight went off with a hitch we made it home just in time to get to church with minutes to spare! And let me tell you, we had church that morning! Praise God! Mercifully, He has a way of covering our mistakes.

Now, I know there were factors that worked against us. Did the certain airline experience chaos that affected us and many others? Absolutely! But at the end of the day, it was my responsibility to make sure my family reached its destination, and I inevitably could blame someone else, but the results were that same. We missed our destination. I am glad everything turned out ok in the end but as I began to search deeper, I realized that so often during our spiritual journey, we find ourselves missing the mark of the

destination.

In Philippians 3:14, Paul states that he presses toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. How often did the enemy try to get Paul sidetracked or “off” the mark? How many land mines did he avoid due to his persistence? The children of Israel that wandered for 40 years let fast-food places, coffee bars and many other issues derail them from their promised land that God had intended for them. The journey was just too much for them to overcome as they got sidetracked on what we understand now as totally senseless and a lack of faith. Did they realize the time spent questioning Moses or complaining about their lack of meat would so easily get them farther from their destination? Did they ever just say to themselves that God would not bring them out of bondage to leave them to die in the desert? No, they said and did the opposite. The journey was so tough that they thought they were meant to die there.

Historical perspective allows us to clearly see the way of God is right and that we can trust Him in every aspect of our life. So, what will future generations say about us? Did we become a casualty of the journey, or did we finish the race that was set before us?