Travelers on The Way
Fifty-five years ago, Joy Carol and I sang a Burl Ives ditty: “As you walk through life, you will have no cares if you walk the lines and not the squares. As you go through life, make this your goal, watch the doughnut not the holes.” Ives spoke wisely. Do not let your life be ruled by silly superstitions. And pay attention to substance, the things in life that really matter.
fifteen years later, Joy Carol and I sang with a chorus of students in the campus ministry at Ohio State, the BSC Singers. We often sang, “My God and I walk through the fields together.” Then, we added Rufus Cornelius’ spiritual, “Oh I Want to See Him.” It became our theme song: “As I journey through the land, singing as I go, pointing souls to Calvary---to the crimson flow. Many arrows pierce my soul from without, within. But my Lord leads me on, through him I must win. Oh, I want to see Him, look upon His face; there to sing forever of his saving grace; On the streets of glory let me lift my voice, cares all past, home at last, ever to rejoice.”
That is a traveling song. The BSC Singers sang it for us as we traveled from Ohio to New York and on to other ports on The Way, ending here at Storrs Road. That song is for all of us. We are travelers on the Way when we follow Christ. “The Way” is the most frequent designation for the church in Acts. It is Paul’s story. We first see him seeking people in Damascus who belonged to the Way, to imprison (Acts 9:2). Luke reports that while he was “on his way” to arrest people of the Way (Acts 22:4, 6), Paul encountered the risen and alive Jesus of Nazareth. Later we see Paul, himself a prisoner, giving his defense: “I admit that according to the Way which they call a sect, I worship the God of our ancestors . . . I have a hope in God that there will be a resurrection . . . It is about the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial” (Acts 24:14ff). The ending for travelers on the Way is when we see the Lord Jesus Christ coming from heaven to earth to transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body (Phil. 3:20-21). Oh, I want to see Him, don’t you?
—Tom Yoakum