I’m driving along Highway US 285 between Buena Vista and Salida, watching the Arkansas River slip past a snow covered world of white. My mind drifts back over the long arc of my life, my faith, my questions, my assumptions, and the slow, steady reshaping of what I think this whole thing is about.
When I first became a Christian at nineteen, the world looked very clear. There were two kinds of people: the saved and the lost. And the great purpose of life, my purpose, was to help move people from one side of the line to the other. It was urgent, it was exhilarating, and it gave me a sense of belonging to a cause far bigger than myself. I didn’t have language for it then, but I was swept up in a mission. And that mission felt noble, necessary, and worth giving my life to.
As the years unfolded, the weight of that mission grew strangely heavy. The obligation, the pressure, the assumption that I somehow bore responsibility for other people’s eternal destiny, it all became an unrealistic task, one too large for any human shoulders. That pressure nudged me to step back and ask whether I needed a bigger, more generous framework.
So I shifted the metaphor. Instead of a mission, life became a mountain. A long climb. A trek toward a summit. The Christian life was something to be built, strengthened, endured. There were false summits, switchbacks, breathtaking views and exhausting stretches. And I loved that imagery. It made sense. It gave shape to the struggle. It honored the grit, the effort, the desire to grow. But even here, quietly tucked inside the frame, was still the promise of arrival. Someday, somehow, I’d make it to the top.
And then, more years, more life, more loss, more tenderness, my imagination shifted again. I no longer see a mission to accomplish or a summit to reach. Not dismissing them entirely, just recognizing they weren’t large enough to hold the reality of being human. More than anything, I’ve come to see that life is a journey. A real one. A winding one. A human one. Filled with inclines, declines, progress, setbacks, hopeful mornings, and bewildering evenings.
When someone my age looks at me and shrugs, “Well, it’s a journey,” I know exactly what they mean. It’s not cynicism. It’s not resignation. It’s wisdom. It’s humility before mystery. It’s the recognition that whatever we think this is all about, we are still learning as we go.
And that brings me to where my mind keeps settling these days. Whatever else life may be: mission, mountain, journey, perhaps the deeper starting point is simply this:
I exist. And I had absolutely nothing to do with it.
My being here is not a result of my effort, my belief, my choices, or my cleverness. I woke up one day in a world already humming with beauty and ache, already filled with sunrise and struggle. And the older I get, the more I see that the simple fact of my existence is not a problem to solve, nor a mission to accomplish, nor a summit to conquer.
It is a gift.
A gift to receive, to explore, to question, to enjoy, to hold with open hands.
And maybe, just maybe, the moment you and I begin to see our existence as gift is the moment the deeper journey truly begins.