Jesus Has Gone Ahead to Prepare the Way

The Longest Walk

What's the furthest distance you've ever walked?

Two years ago, six of us — including my sister Ruth and her husband Neil, my wife Lore and her sister Kylie — hiked the Larapinta Trail in Central Australia. It's a pretty challenging hike: about 220 kilometres over 10 days, carrying a pack loaded up with your sleeping bag, your tent, some clothes, food for three days, and water for one day.

I say three days of food because there are companies you can employ to drop supplies off at three locations along the trail. And there are designated stops each night that have a water tank.

A Harsh and Beautiful Place

If you've ever been to Central Australia, you'll know it is both a harsh and a beautiful place — red rocks, clear blue skies, spectacular sunsets, occasional water holes, and mountain ranges.

Some days the walking is easy: flat with a good track. Other days you can be scrambling over massive boulders down a dry creek bed or climbing up a mountain. The nights are super cold, but the days are warm and can get very hot.

One of the best things, though, was arriving at the overnight stop after a long, hard day of walking — and enjoying the luxury of a long-drop toilet, somewhere to sit and cook your food, and even better, one of the three stops where your fresh food supplies have been dropped off.

Someone Has Gone Ahead

Now, you can only do this kind of walk because someone has gone ahead of you and prepared the way — forming a track, putting up track markers so you don't get lost, water tanks so you don't die of thirst, and food drops so you don't starve.

In church today we're thinking about heaven. We don't know much about what heaven is like, but Jesus said he was going ahead of us to prepare a place just for us.

While we don't know much about heaven, we do know a lot about Jesus — and we can trust in him.

Just as those who prepared the Larapinta Trail made it possible for us to walk safely through a harsh landscape, Jesus has gone before us to prepare the way. We may not know every detail of what lies ahead, but we know the One who has gone ahead — and that is enough.