Manson's Memo 2/23

Sometimes you don’t have to travel very far to seem like you’ve gone far away. Last week Jane and I took a trip to Catalina. (That place “twenty-six miles across the sea” is really only nineteen miles from San Pedro.) Since we spent the night there, we had to pack a small suitcase. Travel there by boat is almost like taking a plane someplace – park the car, get your tickets, board, and off you go. We traveled for an hour, and ended up on that small island and in Avalon, a very touristy town. It is a place that on a clear day we can see from the beach (and on a clear day they can see to L.A.)

But it was so different. There were almost no chains there. There was a KFC, and Vons and Cold Stone ice cream – other than that, there were none of the fast food places we’re used to. It was so different, but we hadn’t even traveled out of the school district we live in. It is so near, but in some ways it is a different world all together.

There are times when it seems God is very far away from us (or that we have wandered far from God). It seems like the gulf between us to just too vast to be traversed. It may even be that on some days we think we can see the Realm of God off in the distance, but we don’t think we’ll ever make it there.

In fact, God is always closer to us than that “twenty-six miles across the sea.” We never have to travel far to find God and the new world that God has for us. We don’t have to travel at all. God is beside us each day.

שלןם

(shalom)