Famously described by Chris Rea as ‘the road to hell’, and known to many through experience as the largest car park in the world, London’s M25 orbital motorway has just celebrated its 30th birthday. It truly is the road to nowhere as 84-year-old pensioner William Allen discovered in 1998, when he set off to drive the few miles to visit his daughter and by mistake joined the M25. He spent two whole days driving around and around the motorway trying to find where to get off.
William’s experience on the road reflects the assumption of many when it comes to living – we’re on the road to nowhere. We’re born, we live, we die and then we’re done and someone else takes our place.
But are we really happy to settle for that as the sum total of our life’s meaning and purpose? The Bible would certainly beg to differ describing life not as a pointless circle that ultimately leads nowhere, but as a journey with a start and a finish. All life begins as an expression of God’s love and creativity, bursting with potential; and our purpose in life is not to end forgotten in a grave, but to discover the riches of new life made possible in Jesus. Make no mistake we were created to go places!