Chariots, Horses, and Lights - Oh My!

It's late at night and you're driving on the highway going a bit over the speed limit, maybe even about 80 mph. No other cars are zipping past you at this time of the night, all you know is that it is you and your car on the highway with your headlights on, just waiting to get to where you've been meaning to go.

Your radio isn't on, it's just one of those car rides where silence sounds like the sweetest of songs. You find your mind is wandering everywhere, but your eyes are just fixated on the 10 or 20 feet that you see in view in front of you from your headlights. Your eyes are just so fixated on seeing the miles of road unfold before you, it's all just rapidly moving. 10 or 20 so feet at a time.

I've been exhausting myself. It's exhausting to fixate your gaze on what you can only physically see right before you. It's exhausting to try and make things of the dark, your eyes straining to try and make out the figures that will soon let with time tell its purpose.

Mostly, it's exhausting trying to contain my faith to a lit up path where I am assured in what is revealed. And it's exhausting to always be wanting to stay up all night figuring out what the Lord is speaking to me in the dark.

Doesn't the road unveil itself for us anyways? Don't we eventually see the thickness of woods when we eventually pass it on our right? Don't we reach the lit up city on our left at some point? Doesn't the Lord assure us that once we see the smallest of lights in the dead of night, we will still notice them?

But rushing time for me lately has been a multitude of red lights and speeding tickets. I get so worked up in wanting to beat the timing of my life. What I'm finding lately is that transition has always been a weird thing for me. I find that I can acclimate to change well, I just dive in head and heart first and find joy in the thrill of meeting new people and seeing new places. This has been my mantra since I moved to Cincinnati for school. I was unbelievably excited to see more of the world and barely took a look behind me. About three years later, and only three days short of studying abroad in Europe for a semester, I'm finding that all I want to do is pull over on the highway and just stand in the illuminated beam of the headlights where I've grown to be the most comfortable...where I've learned home and security has been for me.

When I try with all my might to speed up the journey of God's relationship with me, I recognize I am not also allowing myself to bask in the view of what is right before me. I recognize I am really not allowing myself to soak in the moments of my life and to just feel the beautiful scenery that is being formed before me.

Oh how I wish I had the strength of Elisha in the Old Testament. Elisha, being a prophet of Israel, would be found under attack from the nation of Aram. But every time Aram attacked Israel, the Lord would reveal to Elisha what the nation of Aram's plans were for an attack. (How cool would that be to know when danger is coming?!) Over and over Israel would defeat the nation of Aram because Elisha saw the beauty and depth of the Lord's army encamped against those that would attack him.

When Aram's king had come to understand Elisha's tactics, the king sent an army to deliberately attack him and destroy him.

I've heard it once before from a priest during a homily that if the Bible does not name a certain character in a story from the Bible, we can infer that that character is really you and me. This reminds me of the servant in Elisha's story.

How many times have you woken up in the morning or even tossed and turned all night because you felt as if this spiritual battle was surrounding you? How often does it feel like this world of ours is always against us? How frequent do we as broken people feel engulfed by the weight of the darkness that encompasses our hearts at night?

I must admit, Elisha's servant sounds a heck of a lot like me. His servant happens to wake up one morning, rubbing his eyes from what felt like a restful night, to find outside his tent an army perched outside.

"When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city." Terrified, he rushes back inside and asks Elisha for consolation, "Oh, my lord, what shall we do?" (2 Kings 6:15)

Here I find myself a lot like Elisha's servant. Here I find that all I can ever be fixated on lately is the impact of some uprising. All I can seem to know lately is myself feeling shattered and broken, yet the Lord still nudging me to somehow pick up all my pieces, "get myself together", and to try my best to be a cohesive whole in leaving for a semester abroad and somehow just be okay with it all even though I know I am so battered and wounded from the darkness that I couldn't make out with my squinted, tired eyes.

In moments of desperation and wanting help from the Lord, I lose my confidence in Jesus that He will call upon the armies and warriors battling every day before me in heaven. I forget to see before me what Elisha did, "'Don't be afraid', the prophet answered. 'Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.' And Elisha prayed, 'O Lord, open his eyes so he may see.' Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha." (2 Kings 6:16-17)

The main difference between Elisha and I is that, for whatever reason, I have it in my head that the light that unveils the path before me, is only in front of me. But Elisha, he believed that he was constantly immersed and dunked in the richness of Jesus' light, from the moment of his waking to the moment of his resting every day. Elisha prayed and believed that his gleaming light and joy to see what the Lord could see, would infuse and rip away all darkness. Elisha didn't just believe that at times he would see light when the Lord wanted him to amidst the darkness, but Elisha believed that everything the Lord created is light and at one time everything was light.

Everything is light, and everything that grows dimmer from this realization is just the absence of God's radiant horses and chariots.

And above all, how beautiful and marvelous it is for Elisha to ask the longing desires of his heart, to ask to open his eyes to see what God sees. And to then be given that amazing view.

I swear if God ever allowed me to see the glory of the beams of heaven fighting for me, I might find myself paralyzed by the beauty of it, and become blind to how great the lights are and all of its glory. So although I have no idea how studying abroad in Rome will be, and although I ask for God's safety and protection away from home, I can be sure that there are chariots and horses ready for me. Ready to beat some people's butts for me!

"Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5)

St. Christopher, patron saint of traveling, pray for us!

Our beloved guardian angels, pray for us!