Becky and I are just back from two weeks helping our son and his family move from western Missouri where he was stationed as an Air Force chaplain to his new assignment east of Pensacola, Florida. We spent the first week in Missouri preparing for the move and the second week on the move and the first days of settling into a new house. For Becky and me, 2700 miles, nine states and six different hotels. The trip from Missouri to Florida was less ambitious as we crossed southern Missouri, Arkansas, a corner of Tennessee, across Mississippi, another corner of Alabama, and into Florida. 900 miles in three and a half days. Four drivers, four vehicles, and six children, ages 4 to 14. My passengers were 10-year-old Gideon and almost-6-year-old Micah. They were great travelers.
When you are almost 6 years old or already 10 – or if you’re 4 or 14 years old – 300 miles or more can make for a long day. But each travel day held the promise of a hotel pool waiting at journey’s end for those tired pilgrims. We did not hold out the pool as a reward or in any way threaten to forbid its use as a consequence of some bad behavior. Neither reward nor punishment, just the reality of what was at the end of the day, though I did find myself encouraging the almost-6-year-old, especially, by measuring the remainder of the afternoon’s drive in terms of hours or minutes to the hotel pool.
At the end of our 500-mile first day of the return to Indiana, just the two of us, Becky and I were greeted with a “pool closed” sign at the front desk of that night’s hotel. It was just as well; we were tired of chlorine-soaked air, tepid water, and screaming voices bouncing off the indoor pool walls. But had we been six or ten years old – even fourteen – we would have been devastated. Though we never said so, the hotel pool was seen by the grandchildren as the reward for enduring those long days across Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama.
Our son’s family’s new house in Florida is just a few minutes from the Gulf. After the first trip to the beach – for most of them, their first trip ever – we heard nothing about the hotel pools.
The Christian’s life is often likened to a journey (think Pilgrim’s Progress). And, yes, a reward awaits us at the end of the journey. To those who suffer persecution and the reviling of others on his account Jesus promises a great reward (Matthew 5:12). “The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,” David, the sweet Psalmist of Israel, proclaims (Psalm 18:24).
Like our grandchildren who could imagine nothing more rewarding than the chlorine-soaked air and tepid water of a hotel’s indoor swimming pool until they felt the soft sand, gentle breeze, and breaking waves of the Gulf Coast beach, we Christians have a hard time imagining the reward that awaits us as a gift of grace from our faithful Redeemer. There will be no apologies for the inconvenience at the end of our lives’ journeys.