Something wonderful just ahead!

     As our friend, Barry Mann, once quipped, "I woke up with a sleep injury."  
     This is clearly an ominous sign of encroaching old age--the body falling apart so that somehow or other you manage to roll over or sleep at some kind of a funny angle and awake with a terrible pain in your shoulder or your neck. Right now it hurts to move or turn my head, and I think I'm leaning left.  Sigh.  My daddy was so right--old age is not for sissies.
     I have an idea of the cause of this dreaded "sleep injury."  It's all because of something wonderful just ahead. But to get to that "something wonderful just ahead," I have had to work like a Trojan.  Laundry, grocery store runs, figuring out schedules and carpools, getting things to the tailor for my daughter for something she has this weekend, not to mention working on a lecture for Bible study and on and on... and in the midst of it all, getting precious few hours of sleep night after night.
     And so, as the result of pushing harder and harder all the way up to the finish line, I am now both exhausted and sleep-injured.  Mercy.
     But seriously, what does all this matter?  This is all so inconsequential compared to what's just ahead.  If I can just hang in there a few more hours,  some dear girlfriends and I are going on a trip for the weekend and leaving today!  O glorious day--even if I can't move my neck.  We are leaving these frigid temperatures behind for a few shining days and heading south to sunshine and warmth and crystal blue waters.  Ahh, even now the pain diminishes a bit as I contemplate rest and fellowship and laughter and good food and heat... and no laundry or to do lists or frantic trips to Target for toilet paper and poster board.  I will miss my family.  I really will.  But still... what can I say, but O glorious day!
     You know, though, it's so funny how skewed our perspective can be.  Here this wondrous trip is just ahead, and yet how quickly I discounted the joy just ahead while stuck in the muck and mire of rushing and working and pushing and hurting.
     Sometimes we just forget, don't we?--what God has for just around the bend--because life can just be so relentlessly daily and difficult and demanding.  I just read these simple words this morning in Daily Light: "The Lord is at hand." (Phil. 4:5)  And He is.  He is here with us in this oftentimes messy, exhausting, but still wonderful life.  But He is also at hand in the sense that He is coming back soon, and He will take us to our glorious heavenly home.  Sometimes I just forget... forgive me Father.
     This all made me think of one of my very favorite stories from John Newton.  I've probably shared it before, but it bears repeating.
     "Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his carriage should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him, if we saw him wringing his hands and blubbering out all the remaining mile, 'My carriage is broken!  My carriage is broken!'"
     We have less than a mile before the wonders and joys of heaven and eternity, and yet how often we are blubbering, "My health is broken!  My to do list is broken!  My house is broken!  My children are broken!"  All the while, even as we cry and whine, the Savior is at hand, helping, guiding, strengthening us as we walk that inconsequential little distance on the way to our glorious inheritance.
     If only we would lift our drooping heads to look up and see how close we are and how close the Lord is with us in the midst of our struggles and how wonderful it is "just ahead."  If we could but gain that perspective... "less than a mile, less than a mile and the Good Shepherd is with me and leading me," what a difference it would make for us today... on our way to somewhere wonderful.
     So today, let's keep pushing and trusting and knowing... there truly is "something wonderful just head."  And the Good Shepherd is leading us safely home.  To God be the glory.