You know sometimes you find yourself in a moment that catches you by surprise? A time when an unexpected thought or encounter stops you in your tracks, or takes your breath away?

I had one of the those on the weekend.

I was helping to host a training course for church leaders, aimed at encouraging imagination and creativity as churches find their place in the modern world.  Towards the end of the day we invited participants to share something of what they were thinking about, stories from their local communities and churches about imaginative and creative fresh approaches to the age-old calling of the church.

One lady stepped up and shared her story. She’s from Barbados, and is currently in Australia for the Pan Pacific Master’s Games. She had visited a local church on Sunday and they’d invited her to come and join them as they participated in the workshop. Her story was of a group that decided to walk non-stop around Barbados, praying for the communities through which they passed as they travelled along.  The walk took 23 hours…impressive!

What caught my attention was her description of their walk and how they chose where to go: as they walked, they quite literally ‘let the horizon by their guide’.

Let the horizon be your guide.

I can’t quite say why exactly that phrase stopped me in my tracks: Let the horizon be your guide.

Maybe because some of the most enjoyable running or riding experiences I’ve had have happened when I’ve followed a coastline, and the simple pleasure of letting the horizon be my guide has been true in those moments.

Maybe it’s the very notion of living on an island, one small enough to walk around in a day, a community small enough to know and be known as opposed to the anonymity and closed-ness of life in a big city where the horizon (literally and metaphorically) is often not within my field of view.

Or maybe because in our culture and community today (or maybe just in my own life) we don’t tend to pay a lot of attention to the horizon. We tend to look down at our feet, just trying flat out to deal with what’s right in front of us. The big picture barely gets a look in.  The horizon seems to far away.

The very idea of letting the horizon be my guide….in many different aspects of life….encourages me to lift my eyes, to see the big sky, to look beyond the stereo-typical navel-gazing.

It’s almost, I think, a notion to live by.

Let the horizon be your guide.