Few things make a traveller more anxious than a half open suitcase. You stand there staring at it as if it might answer back. Have I packed too little or have I packed too much? Do I really need three shirts for two days or will two shirts bravely manage three days. Should I carry an extra pair of shoes just in case something dramatic happens to my feet? And then comes the big question. Does the place I am going to have a washing machine or will I be washing socks in a bathroom sink like a guilty teenager.
I have lived on both sides of this luggage tragedy. I have travelled light and spent the last day of the trip smelling like a person who has walked through history rather than lived in it. I have also travelled heavy and spent the entire trip dragging a suitcase that seemed to have developed its own opinions and resisted being moved. Airports are full of such people. Those who glide along smugly with cabin bags and those who sweat and groan behind enormous suitcases that clearly contain winter clothes for a summer destination.
Packing forces you to think ahead. You imagine each day of your trip. What will I wear on day one. What if it rains on day two. What if someone important invites me for dinner on day three. We pack for events that may never happen. We carry fears stitched into fabric. Just in case. That phrase has ruined many backs and several marriages.
And then one day, driving along, you pass a graveyard. Rows of quiet stones. Names. Dates. Short sentences trying to summarise entire lives. And suddenly the suitcase problem looks foolish. Every one of those people travelled lighter than the lightest traveller. They carried nothing with them. Not their money. Not their achievements. Not even their regrets.
They did not carry their good deeds in neat folders. All that remained was one thing.
Faith. Or the absence of it.
If anything was carried, it was a belief. That Jesus died on the cross for them. That His grace was enough. That salvation was not something you packed carefully but something you received freely. As the Bible reminds us, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
No excess baggage. No weight limits. No anxious weighing at the counter of eternity.
Standing there, I find myself asking uncomfortable questions. How many of them carried that belief? How many trusted that grace?
We worry endlessly about what we carry in a worldly suitcase. Perhaps we should worry more about what we carry in our hearts. Because one day, the ultimate journey will come. And on that day, there will be no packing list. No last-minute rearranging. No paying extra for overweight baggage.
Only the weight of one question, “Do you know where you’re going?”
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