“Where Can I Go” has so many different sides to it. You can be suffering physical pain with a despairing cry inside of “Where Can I Go?” You can be going through a relationship breakup with tears inside all the while you have this sinking feeling of “Where Can I Go?” You can be faced with all the voices and the words they piled upon you pushing you to be something that you just need time to sort things out with the pressure of “Where Can I Go?” A dead-end is a place where there are no other options that could cause you to think “Where Can I Go“.
HAVE YOUR EVER EXPERIENCED
Walking along a path in the woods passing by different sizes and types of trees with various heights of vegetation on each side reaching from your ankles to your knees and you come to a place where you can go no further and your mind is busy looking for the answer to “Where Can I Go?“.
You are out with family and friends at a shopping mall, ball game, concert, and any other large crowd you may remember. You and those with you are completely surrounded by other people. As you are moving along a separation occurs whether it was from others walking faster than you or the pressing crowd separates you. You are standing there in a pressing crowd of people wondering where those you know have gone. You cannot see them or hear them. Your realize you are alone with a crowd of people completely around you. You think “Where Can I Go” with no sound in reply as your mind is totally blank.
Out on the bike you are riding along enjoying the freedom to ride. You get an exploring spirit turning down this way and that way as the wind blows past your face. The rolling along on your bike has a mesmerizing feeling as you continue to explore. You make another turn to see what is down this way finding a dead-end with like an ocean wave of a disappointing feeling rolling in upon you. You realize you have been going forward all this time with no turning back or back tracking. At this dead-end you are looking with searching eyes of “Where Can I Go” because right beside that thought is “I don’t want to go back, I want to keep going forward, I have come this far“.
Driving your vehicle in the direction you think will end up going where you are trying to reach only to find out that this road you just tried ends up being a cul-de-sac or a dead-end. “Where Can I Go” now to get back on the right route to my destination is all that your mind is searching. Sitting in your vehicle trying to get somewhere with no answer to “Where Can I Go” is a bad feeling especially if it is a dependency and really important to be there situation.
Relationships from boyfriend/girlfriend, going steady, engaged to be married, and marriage are deep-rooted in our hearts, minds, and even some our souls. We bond with another person in such a way that we have concluded they complete us. They are the answer to you physically and spiritually. When the sour, bitterness, anger, lack of understanding, confusion, jealousy, envy enters between you and them the “Where Can I Go” painfully takes over your entire system with division leaving you in darkness of what seems to an engulfing abyss of emotions. This is one of the hardest times in life facing the breakups, the deceptions, and the betrayals leaving the aftermath of “Where Can I Go” weighing you down.
Some have set out on a quest in life journeying for answers longing for satisfaction. A strong desire of ‘I want to know‘ and ‘I want to understand‘, and ‘I want to see with my own eyes‘ embeds itself deep into their spirit causing a daily hunger and thirst. The days come and go increasing into weeks, months, and then years without finding that satisfying answer. Along life’s journey you accumulate fragments that are alright with you, but they don’t fit together in a wholesome way only to come close to feeding the hunger inside. The “Where Can I Go” drives some into a place they wake up doing a morning routine, work a routine shift, and go home to the routine evening waiting for the cycle to repeat while the hunger and thirst sleeps inside their shell. You are physically moving every day, speaking words in correct response to those you encounter, and doing the functions expected of you all the while you are an empty shell because there is no completion to the inside you no one sees.
PASSAGE OF TIME
Passage of time is something we all face. Time is controlled by no one in this life. Time is constantly in motion going forward. Each second leaves the present and goes into the past. The seconds of our life piles up into minutes. Minutes quickly add together forming into hours. The days, weeks, months, and years from where we stand looking back have moved on to a place we can never change. Our memory only goes back into the past so far and then its a place ‘I don’t remember‘ anymore.
As little children we looked up to the towering people around us. They pick us up with such ease and power that our eyes would light up with excitement. We would watch these people of giants come and go on a daily basis. Sometimes they would bring back food, drinks, clothing, shoes, and other things. Our looking up to them with time becomes a shorter distance. They were not as far away in heights was they were before. Time was ticking by as an unnoticed growth in our body was occurring beneath our own nose while the curiosity of our minds was busy on a quest of life. The accumulation of experiences started to pile up in our storage rooms of life. We were slowly entering into their world were the other giant adults gathered.
We have our childhood memories, teenage memories, young adult memories, and adult memories to call upon anytime for the moments we faced that coming to a dead in life wondering “Where Can I Go” from here. The bad pranks, heart breaks of relationships, the lies, the highs, and the lows coming down upon us like the four seasons. We did not realize the shell of doing the morning routine, work routine, and evening routine we saw in the adults of our childhood days had crept in upon us putting our hunger and thirst to sleep inside us. We became them as they were us once upon a time.
We all have got into the boat of life from the shores of infancy riding towards the waves of time. As we watch ourselves getting farther from the shore of our beginnings. We turn around in this boat of time seeing the horizon not realizing the rut of daily routines were physically being done while our spirit sleeps the sleep of death. We have gone through the storms of being tossed around, the rain pouring down on us, warm sunshine, and the quiet calm times of life. We wake inside the boat being moved by the ocean currents and winds of time beyond our control finding ourselves changing from the little child into the adults around us. We were the children at the shore and now we are the adult captains of our own ships in the ocean of life wondering “Where Can I Go” to fill this empty void. Where did time go?
Simon was a little boy watching his father Jonah happily come home and sadly leave for work every day. When Simon grew older he could go with his dad to work learning his father’s trade and skills. He and his brother would watch as time altered their dad into an aging man. They would step up into their dad’s place as time aged them into young strong adults. Something was missing though their morning routine, their working routine, and their evening routine ran smoothly. They had that feeling there was something more to life than being the physical shells repeating the same functions over and over each day.
As you read this can you see yourself waking up doing a certain physical thing each time, going to work with the like same functions for the same results, and going home with the mind-set of getting things done for the next round? Are you walking and talking with the set parameters of what is considered a normal response keeping people around you pacified? Your spirit is hungry and thirsty while your outward shell is maintaining a sustainable life. What life is being sustained here? Your physical body is aging. You know the truth is no one can stop the body from aging no matter how many products you buy. The shell that holds your spirit will one day stop doing the routines of daily functions, but your spirit is the storehouse of all the things done in your lifetime. Your spirit is a living book that you and others write onto the pages of your eternal life.
The question of “Where Can I Go” will happen for the physical things of this life, but the most important part for this question should be for the non-physical things of this life. We will face the dead-end roads and the bad relationships of this life with physical tears, pains of the heart, and disappointments. Our body will do what needs to be done to sustain itself in this life, but more so our spirit that will keep things beyond the sustainment of this world is far more important. Our physical shell takes into itself the daily routines to continually function, but our spirit on the inside stores the thoughts and actions of those deeds forever (Ps. 40:7, Heb. 10:7).
Our is spirit is an eternal recording device along with the personality it chooses to be. There is a need to ask “Where Can I Go” to help my spirit because the body will return to the dust of the earth releasing the spirit within for its book to be read for the purpose of deciding the location it will stay forever (Eccl. 12:7). Our born physical fleshly body from infancy to childhood to a teenager, a young adult, adulthood, and to the aging elder years is going to release our spirit one day. Just like time that you, I and no one else can control our body will have to let go of our spirit releasing it totally. After this there will be no “Where Can I Go” because the ability to change has left from the temporary physical state of what is being written into the completely finished writing final eternal state. In our body second chances exist after leaving our body there is no more chances.
You and I are in the place where the question of “Where Can I Go” is still an option. We are still inside this time zone to change direction when there is no more roads. After your body and my body gives up to a physical death leaving this time zone our spirit drivers of those bodies go into the place that time and changing directions is no more. What our spirit has recorded is final at this point. Years ago I caught parts of a movie called “Final Fantasy: Spirits Within” (2001) though the majority of it is made up there are parts of a spirit leaving a body that is very real. Also, another interesting movie years ago was “Ghost” (1990), which again mostly made up, but the part of the character at first wanting revenge from the spirit side witnessing the final judgments of another spirit changed him from wanting to see any other spirit sent to the bad place in their final judgment. We will leave these bodies whether we like it or not, but “Where Can I Go” needs to be answered now because we do not know the day nor the hour it is time for us to leave this world. Once we are gone it cannot be changed. We have left our temporary state and have entered our eternal state.
While we are in this physical shell doing our morning routines, work routines, and evening routines there is a chance to answer for our spirit the question of “Where Can I Go” and give the body of this world a life to record good things into our spirit all the way up to the final departure. Every day we are exchanging our life in place of things accountable to us at the end of time.
Simon and his brother knew there were more to this life than their repeated sustaining routines for their families and their physical bodies. One day in the middle of their work routine a man walking by the sea called out to them while they were doing their jobs as fishermen and said to them “Come, follow me and I will send you out to fish for people.” (Mark 1:16-17). Out of curiosity it would not hurt them to take a break to see for themselves and understand what he was talking about. They completely understood how to fish for fish because their physical shells could probably do it in their sleep, but going out fishing for people was a different direction than what they were accustom. They were testing the question of “Where Can I Go” when they started following Jesus.
The answer to ‘there is more to this life‘ than the mundane routines and “Where Can I Go” came quickly after following Jesus. He took them into a church and began teaching. His teachings were not like the other teachers. They too were like shells of routine in their teachings going through the motions. Jesus was not a shell of dried up routine teaching he had authority rising up out of his mouth, which stirred up an evil spirit from the no time zone side (spirit realm). The evil spirit using the fleshly voice of a man who had given up on this life asked Jesus what he wanted with him, have you come to destroy me, and he knew he was the Holy One of God. Simon and the other people could see Jesus and this man talking to each other, but they could not see the controlling evil spirit. When Jesus said to the evil spirit to be quiet and come out of him Simon and the people saw the physical shell of a man become violent, shrieking loudly, and then going calm. Everyone was amazed at the spoken power this man had over the evil spirit. Now, Simon following out of curiosity and wanting to find the answer to “Where Can I Go” for the things more to this life just saw the man who said to him from the shores he would send him out to fish for people command an evil spirit. (Mark 1:21-27).
If you and I were Simon or his brother and witnessed this would you not be curious to see the end of this road? Is this person for real or not? Would you not want to watch and listen before completely accepting him as for real or finding out if he was fake to reject and go home to the morning, work, and evening routine? They know “Where Can I Go” is to follow this man for he offers things no other person has ever offered.
There are so many events that happened to Simon and his brother Andrew it would be too much in this one reading to cover. I will quickly touch on a few more. Jesus asked Simon, known as Peter, who do you say that I am? Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus told Peter the source of his understanding, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” again the spirit realm (Mtt. 16:16-19) Simon Peter now has a physical shell that is alive inside to where he should go for the answers in life tapping into the rivers of living water flowing inside his spirit. He is no longer a shell of sustaining routine of not knowing “Where Can I Go“. Another time people were leaving Jesus because his words were to hard for them to accept. Jesus turns to Simon Peter asking him did he want to leave also? Simon Peter answered, ‘You have the words of eternal life. Lord, to whom shall we go? You are the Holy One of God.‘ (Jn. 6:68, 69). Simon had found the total answer to “Where Can I Go” satisfying his soul.
You wake up each day starting your morning routine, do your work routine, and return to the evening routine as another day of time passes aging your body closer to shutting down date while your spirit records your words and actions onto eternal pages written of your life. This is an extremely sobering statement of life. All the people in the world far away or right by your side cannot fill this empty room made for God only. Your body has a time limit on it that no one can control, but you can control what is going into your spirit for all eternity.
If you could store things to be preserved eternally what would they be? The things we store eternally in our spirit will be judged by our eternal Father of its worthiness to be allowed or not into His kingdom. Simon Peter found what completely satisfies his soul and God. Simon came to understand of being born again of water and of spirit (Acts 2:38) gave him a place to go to fill his life with faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love was more productive to this life and the life to come (2 Pe. 1:5-15). His body was a tent temporarily housing his spirit that will one day leave it to search no more for the answer of “Where Can I Go“.
2 Cor. 5:1-11 “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. For we live by faith, not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience.” NIV.