God knows the journey

Mark Twain once asked a baggage handler on a passenger train if the man thought his briefcase was strong enough to be placed in the baggage compartment. The baggage handler shrugged, took Twain’s case, and promptly hurled it to the pavement. “That, sir,” he said, “is what she’ll get in Philadelphia.” Then he picked it up and struck it four or five times against the side of the train. “And that,” he continued, “is what she’ll get in Chicago.” Finally he threw the case to the ground and stomped on it vigorously until the author’s books and papers spilled out, saying, “And that’s what she’ll get in Sioux City.” As Twain watched slack-jawed, the handler nodded at his now mangled case and advised, “If you’re going any farther than Sioux City, sir, I’d suggest you carry it on yourself!”           

In a sense, Twain was lucky. He saw before he boarded the train what the journey ahead would entail. But the best most of us can hope to do is observe the journey of life from our fast-moving train and attempt—while the scenery whizzes past us—to make some half-ordered sense of it all. Life is full of contrasts and ripe with paradox. It contains full measures of trouble and triumph, of sadness and joy. But at its heart, there is a divine order. Although we long to see it in full and understand it completely, we cannot. We can only trust that God knows the journey, and that His view is bigger and more complete than our own.