Daily Devotion - Friday, July 9

Where Are You Looking These Days?

Never look down to test the ground
Before taking your next step:
Only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon
Will find his right road.
--from Markings by Dag Hammarskjold
Former Secretary-General of the United Nations

Dag Hammarskjold was a person of incredible insight. His spiritual diary, Markings, is filled with some pretty remarkable statements, statements that demand some attention. Today’s quote is intended to remind us of a vision we need to claim.

As we complete this devotional week focusing on patriotism, these words seem helpful. During this past year many of us (probably all of us) have spent quite a bit of time looking down and testing the ground. One way of describing our post 9/11 lifestyle is that we are consumed with looking for where the land mines might be.

Hammarskjold reminds us that “getting on the right road” requires vision, vision into the distant tomorrows. What are the dreams you are dreaming? What work are you doing now because your eye is fixed on a far-horizon dream?

I still am a dreamer who believes there is a distant horizon out there where peace is a reality. It seems there is a distant horizon where creation is singing the same song. It seems that there is a world where there can be sharing by all and scarcity for none.

Working toward sustaining a global village where there is such hope may be a far horizon, but it is the deepest patriotic thing that we can do.

A prayer for today: God of all creation, help me to look up and see the far horizon that you’ve placed before all of us. Amen.

--Ben Keckler
07.09.10