Perhaps some part of us had hoped for a dramatic exterior event. If the ways of the world as we know it had ground to a halt, a new way of life, however temporary, would be the only option before us.

An abrupt break with the immediate past, thrust upon us,
would carry with it the inevitability of a different future­
perhaps one better than that which could be crafted
by the devices and desires of our own hearts.

But nothing much appears to have happened, externally, and we are left with time to reflect on the state of things as they are.

Without a dramatic exterior event, we may feel caught in the current of past decisions and present habits. The momentum of the world and the inertia in our lives, may convince us that we are fated to cycle slowly in a dark water eddy that goes nowhere. We look for outward action to change our innermost being. We hear Matthew's Gospel, and the drama of being sent to Egypt, and that journey begins to sound like an answer to prayer.

But Joseph wasnąt courting radical change in his life.
He certainly hadnąt issued orders to God asking for a particular outcome or itinerary.
A faithful walk with God is not like choosing among the rides at Disneyland. It is more like agreeing to go down the Amazon, when a trusted friend calls you out of the blue and issues an invitation. We cannot know the details of the journey yet to come. We can only decide whether or not to trust our guide and companion.

For Joseph, the journey led to Egypt.
Joseph wasn't seeking escape, or asking for favors.
He simply listened to God's unexpected call, left his house, and set off across the sand to the home of the river Nile.

Joseph and Jesus and Mary went to Egypt,
and when the time was right, they came back again.
But the journey was so much more than retracing their earlier steps.

There is a Zen koan, a teaching riddle, which claims that we can never cross the same river twice. The wisdom in this curious statement is in knowing the difference between a boundary marker and the thing itself.

The solid earth and rocks on a river's banks mark the location of the river.

But it is the ever moving water that is the river itself.

The water we walked through yesterday is gone.
Even if the earth around it lasts a thousand years,
the river we experienced has moved downstream.

There is another saying, from Western Christianity,
that marks the newness of each moment.
The Benedictine tradition proclaims that "everyday, we begin again."

Both these statements are true whether we awake to cross the Nile a second time, or we stride into a new century when the sun rises out of the sea.

Joseph and his family were in Egypt, for a time.
Jeremiah and his people were strangers in a strange land.
Jacob wrestled with an angel in the darkness by a river, on the longest night of his life.
We may feel that our journey has stalled in a place not of our own choosing.
But the voice of God is rippling underneath the murmuring we make.

We are not stuck ­ if we are in exile, we may have to wait, for a time. If our life has grown strange and we no longer recognize the world around us, even captivity does not last forever.

If we are wrestling in the darkness, we may emerge with wounds.
But God may also call us by a new name and give us a new future to go with it.
Jacob wrestled in the dead of night on one side of the water.
Israel limped, gilded by dawn and God's grace, on the far bank.
The river of living water does not stand still,
and those who enter it are changed.

Our call is to listen to all these stories so that we might remember the things which are to come. The promise of the gathering of the faithful remnant still stands.

Jacob and Jeremiah are long gone. Joseph and Mary have passed from the scene.

But the God who led them still carries the faithful into a future full of hope.

The journey we are making through life is not new.
Millions have passed this way before.
They have know the salt of grief, the darkness of fear, and the sparkling sound of joy.
If we wade into the stories we will see the truth dancing like light on fast moving water.
God has ransomed, not just Jacob, but all who will listen, from hands too strong for them.

Jesus, born in Bethlehem ­ gone to a far place and back again ­ has ransomed us ­ from the grip of sin and death.

His river crossings will never be repeated, but the water rushes downstream to us.

We have just marked the turn of a century, and the coming of a new millennium. It is very important that we make the distinction between the markers and that to which they point.

The end of the century, or even the exact point of the passage of two thousand years, is not the important thing. These markers are merely part of the riverbank.

If we focus on markers, we will make altars out of dead hopes and lifeless fears.
We will worship our own projections or succumb
to the dire millennial predictions of others.

We can reverence any of these rocks that litter the landscape, mistaking them for the thing itself, or we can recognize the river running through it.

We can listen for God's call to us, ever changing, ever new.

We can enter into that journey that cleanses, changes and transports. We can step beyond the bondage and the boundaries of the rocks, into the living water itself.

Every day we begin again. We cannot cross the same river twice.
Sometimes we will be called to wait. Sometimes we will wrestle.
Sometimes we will be called forth to travel in haste to a land we do not know.
But if we will enter the current of Christ, again and again, we will come to know Him, so that with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know the hope to which he has called us, we may learn what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and we will feel the immeasurable greatness of his power for those who believe.