A Long Walk in the Same Direction

Accomplishing almost anything significant is a long walk in the same direction.  Need further explanation of this principle?  Here are a few examples:

1. I married my wife on August 24, 1996.  This event, however, was not a one day creation.  Our wedding followed 9 years of friendship and 3 years of dating.  While the event was on one particular day, Kimberly and I had walked together for a long time to the destination of August 24.
2. I am graduating from Dallas Theological Seminary this month with my doctorate.  The achievement of this degree culminated in the successful defense of my dissertation last month, but the degree was not a one day event.  Counting all schooling from elementary to graduate, I have had 27 years of schooling!  That is certainly a long walk in the same direction!

In your life, no doubt you can think of many examples of the same principle.

As I look at  God’s Word, I also see that the macro-story God is authoring is a long walk in the same direction.  From the moment of creation, God desired to have a relationship with humans.  Very early on in the story of human interaction with God, people’s relationship with their creator looked to be in jeopardy.  Satan (in the form of a snake) had deceived Adam and Eve and coaxed them into eating the forbidden fruit, ushering sin into the world, and creating a separation in the fellowship between God and mankind.  At this moment, God informed Adam and Eve of the ultimate plan that would cross this newly created divide and make it possible for humans to escape the curse of sin.  In Genesis 3:15, God says (in an amplified version), “I will put difficulty between Satan and mankind, between Satan and (ultimately) Jesus;  Jesus will one day crush the head of Satan, even though Satan will look like he hurts Jesus first.”  What this passage tells us is that from the Garden of Eden, God had been planning on Jesus eventually coming to the earth and defeating Satan.  At first Satan looked like he won when he succeeded in killing Jesus on the cross at Calvary, but ultimately, Jesus rose from the dead, securing the forgiveness of mankind and returning to the earth to defeat Satan once and for all . . . crushing Satan’s head.

Though Jesus death on the cross happened on only one day, the accomplishment of our salvation was a long walk in the same direction.  Jesus had been walking to the cross literally for thousands of years.  The love of God is revealed to us even more clearly when we see that our salvation was God’s plan all along!