Does this statue look like you? Are you a weary warrior, fighting to stay atop your equally weary mount?
This sculpture, called The End of the Trail, was created in the late 1800s and it gripped my heart the first time I saw it as a child. I was fascinated by this slumped and swaying warrior, and I wanted to know what had crushed his spirit so badly. Had he been injured in battle or was he merely bowed by exhaustion or grief? How had such a noble soul come to such a defeated, broken end?
I didn’t realize at the time that my life would often resemble that statue.
Yours probably has too.
We have all ridden toward the horizon, ready to win the day, only to come to the end of the trail, hurting, lonely, dazed, and confused, and wondering how it all went wrong.
When we come to the end of the trail and droop like this valiant warrior, there is only one lasting cure for our soul—the presence and nearness of God. Max Lucado calls that place of God’s presence “the sweetest spot in the universe.”[1]
The Gospel story is one of simultaneous expansion and narrowing. It is expanding toward the furthest reaches of the known world, but it is also honing in on individuals like a heat-seeking missile.
God wants to draw close to you. His very name, Emmanuel (God with us), says so.
That nearness—more than any other place in the universe—is where life becomes sweet and the common life is truly cured. Amid the challenges of our world and the fears of our own soul, let’s lean into that place until we sense His presence and His Spirit makes us whole.
[1] Max Lucado, The Cure for the Common Life (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2005): 70.