You Can't Make It On Your Own

"Listen to me now/I need to let you know/You don't have to go it alone.../Sometimes you can't make it on your own." -U2

When going on any kind of journey the question to ask is "What do I take with me?"  How do you answer that question when thinking eschatologically?  My guess is that list will include things that are both temporal and eternal.  While things temporal may be somewhat important, the essential needs should be the primary focus.  And the only thing that I can think of, at least in a Christian context, that is both temporary and eternal is relationships.  Your relationship with God, others, and yourself.  It is these relationships which are necessary for embarking, traveling, and finishing the journey.  And it is also these relationships that when developed and intensified (improved), that make the journey at all doable.  The journey of living eschatologically is a journey of relationships.  It is important here to note that eschatology for the Christian is both future and present-forward.  As we grow in our relationships, as we travel together, we are demonstrating the looking-forward-to kingdom now.  We are living the kingdom, not sitting around waiting for Left Behind to happen so we can be free of the world.  

If the journey each Christian is on is thought of eschatologically, we realize that we not only can journey together, but we must.  Missing a relational element means missing one or more of the necessary essentials of the journey.  So while U2 is on the right track, they are not quite to the point.  "Sometimes you can't make it on your own" for the Christian becomes simply, "You can't make it on your own."  And indeed we can't.  Our attempts at going on the journey alone are futile, because like Pilgrim, in Pilgrim's Progress, we will be confronted on the road by men who are greater than we are by ourselves.  It is only when we recognize that we are on the journey together, and that the journey means growing in relationship with each other, that we can truly journey at all.  When we do recognize the reality of this is when the we begin to see the Church being the Church.  For all the problems that the Church faces, the lie of individual freedom is perhaps one of the greatest.  But if we can get beyond the lure of that freedom, we can begin to live in relationship, and we can begin to journey eschatologically.