Catharina Siraa is the Operations Advisor at the National Support Centre and is also a member of Royal Oak Baptist Church.
My life follows a predictable pattern. A busy summer of adventures and event planning, a scurrying through mid-year, a pre-scheduled seven week ‘sabbath’ slow down period, a reflective moment at the end of each year, shortly followed thereafter by yet another summer. It’s a rhythm and it’s what works for me. As I sit at the beginning of a new year, weighing up the contents of the improbable schedule I have built for my next few months, sketching it over and over on a piece of paper to make sure that the calculation works and I will indeed have time to sleep, I pause.
I am not invited to a life of haste and hurry, but to a life of journey. We’ve all heard the saying, “Life’s about the journey, not the destination”. Although arguably, as Christian’s life is all about the destination, but that’s an aside. How often in life do we use this ‘journey’ as a reason for our busyness? These schedules of mine, with moments packed and stacked on top of each, are all about the journey… right?
As a young-ish person I live in a world of contradiction. Make the most of every moment, for you never know how many you have left… and also live like you’ve got plenty of years, like no decision cannot be undone. Try everything, jump feet first into life, YOLO. How can I use what I have to make a bigger, better life for myself. Or, the Christian framing: how can I use what God has given me to achieve great things for God. I trust, that somehow I can build something, using all of my talents and energy, that will be of use. I trust that I can make this journey worth something, count for something. There may be pain in the journey, but somehow I can overcome that.
I have fallen into the trap of framing my relationship with God as inviting him to join my journey, to walk alongside me in the race of life as I chase every tailwind and climb every mountain. God promises to be with us after all, highs and lows and everywhere in between. But somehow in this I still end up racing, planning, and achieving. But what if relationship with God doesn’t mean simply adding a companion to the journey, but a radical reorientation of what journey itself means.
An uncomfortable truth I have wrestled with - God does not need me, but he chooses to invite my participation. God made a beautiful world, full of beautiful things, and yet something was missing. God wanted something, someone, to walk alongside, someone to have relationship with… me, you, us, humanity. You know how the story goes from there. We took advantage of things pretty quickly, hard launching the human condition (sin). But God in his patience had a plan for redeeming it all. He still wanted the relationship with us. And even though we were far from perfect he has been on a journey with humankind throughout all of history… including me and you today.
We are called to journey alongside God. I am reflecting on the way Jesus journeyed as he walked on this earth. He walked the long way, took the inconvenient path, sat for hours for all the children to pass, stopped for meals, and conversations, and healings along the way. The disciples tried to guide, hurry, prepare the way, hold back the crowds, even float a boat occasionally. But Jesus wasn’t just teaching them what to say and do as they wandered, but how to wander, showing that the rhythm of a life well lived is a life where we are interruptible. Where we have enough stillness that we can hear the Spirit’s whispers on the wind.
The rhythm that I need to create is less focused on what I am doing in my life and how I am maximising the moments I am given, but more on how I am walking. And sometimes it is that simple… walking, and being open to what, or who, might stumble into my path. This year I am being invited to be interruptible, to be distracted by the things of God, to follow his leading and see where I land. I am being invited to participate in the ways and places in our world that God is already at work in. I am being invited to see God as I see him reflected in the people around me. I am being invited to see the ways that peace and reconciliation are present in my community through the work of the Spirit. I am being invited to sit, to listen, to learn, to appreciate, and to recentre my life not on my plans and thoughts, but on God’s everlasting invitation to relationship with him. Perhaps you are being invited to the same?
Photo supplied by Catharina Siraa: Times Square, New York, 2025
