I’ve seen lots of highways. If you live in Canada it’s likely that you’ve seen lots of highways too. Our country is so large that we need highways to see each other.
Though highway trips are long and possibly filled with car-sickness, flat tires, radiator leaks and bad hotels, the destination is worth the hassle. The people at your destination stir an affection that motivates your heart. It’s as if the highway runs through your heart. It’s a heart highway.
For the ancients, they understood how the heart highways developed. The psalmists who were from the line of Korah recorded their heart’s destination: Zion. They wrote:
The go from strength to strength; each one appears before God in Zion” Psalm 84:7.
Like many musicians, the Korah-sons knew what it was like to be on the road. Their goal was so good, that it kept them pounding the pavement. Imagine how the longing was met with overflowing delight! They would go from, “Are we there yet?” to “We won’t wander anymore”. To be in God’s special place, Zion, welcomed with grand hospitality to be with God himself. Such a meeting would require the language of poetry and the joy of singing!
The believer is strengthened for the journey by the delight in the destination. The goal of being with God provides the strength they need to go through valleys of tears and trials (84:6). God builds into the soul his own roadworks that lead the believer to himself. The believer’s longings, desires, affections, motives and goals are so many mile markers laid in the heart that is on pilgrimage toward God.
When the believer finds strength inside, in their heart, in the inner man (Eph 3:16; 2 Cor 4:16), it is because they have had the highway paved there. Even as they meet sorrow and trial, they are merely passing through. Their delight and joy is in a destination, just around the bend, over the hill and around the corner.
It is the destination of being with God forever, resting at home with Him, never needing to travel again.