The title of this blog, The Road Between Here and There, is taken from a poem of the same name by Galway Kinnell. Throughout the poem, Kinnell reflects on all that has delighted him in the “here,” but how the here always pushes onward to the “there.” He ultimately concludes: “For when the spaces along the road between here and there are all used / up, that’s it.” In the end, it is a mediation on the movement of time, and an encouragement that though time moves, we too can move willfully within our days so that we might leave the mark of moments along the way. The alternative is that time would only mark us: “Here I sat on a boulder by the winter-steaming river and put my / head in my hands and considered time-which is next to / nothing, merely what vanishes, and yet can make one’s / elbows nearly pierce one’s thighs.” It is certain that time will always mark us, so the question of the poem is, will we return the favor? Will we mark time with moments and memories, steeped in the belief that the here is a gift meant to prepare us for there which is a better gift?
Indeed, though the here is temporary, it is nonetheless important, for the here marks us for the there to come. “There” is not an end but a beginning, for the there to come has the weight of glory. And as we dwell in the in-between of the already but not yet of the coming Kingdom, how we live in the here (rather what we believe and who we trust) determines if we can even bear the weight of the there.
When the people of Israel stood on the brink of the Promised Land and listening to the reports of the spies, they were faced with a choice of trust. One group of spies, the majority, said, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants” (Num 13:32). The second group, the minority report, said otherwise: “The land is good…If the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us” (Num 14:7-8). The first group rested on the certainty of defeat. The second group rested on the certainty of God’s character. It was God who promised them the land, God who promised to drive out their enemies before them. But the people did not believe the promise of God, nor the witness of the spies and the fruit of the land they brought back as evidence of its bounty. For when they spied out the land “was the season of the first ripe grapes” (Num 13:20). It was this fruit they returned with that bore witness that the testimony of the Lord was true-this is a land flowing with milk and honey.
As those who sojourn in the here, longing for the there, we are continually faced with the same choice. Israel believed the witness of doubt and wandered for 40 years, letting time and circumstance mark them. But the choice of faith or doubt still stands for us. Do we mark the here with moments and memories that testify to the goodness of the God who not only gives us this moment but promises to lead us into the bounty of the there? Do we behold the fruit of the land to come, the Holy Spirit, and trust that His fruit is the guarantee of the promised rest, the longed for milk and honey of our promised land, which is nothing less than Christ and His Kingdom? To answer yes is to answer with faith and to live in the here with the determination to mark our time with moments that declare not only the gift of now, but also the future glory of the there to come.