Sleeping Through a Trip to Nowhere
A lot of people are stressed. That is true not just in America, but in many cultures around the world. As our level of productivity and technology increase, we often find that we also have to deal with more stressors. For many, that also leads to a lack of sleep (or, at least, a lack of good sleep).
A tour company in Hong Kong recently launched a new tour that is meant to provide a solution for that issue. Depending on your type of seat, you can be the equivalent of anywhere from $13-$51 dollars to ride a bus for five hours…to nowhere.
After what is described as a “food coma” meal, passengers get on the bus and drive for five hours around Hong Kong, but are encouraged to just sleep. While there are stops along the way, the purpose of the entire “tour” is to sleep on the 47-mile-long tour that ends up where it started. (I have yet to figure out why there are stops on a trip where people are supposed to be sleeping, but I’m also not always too bright.)
This is not an article about stress, though. It is also not some writeup about sleep.
Instead, I want to share what I first felt when I read an article about that tour. It struck me that the slumbering bus trip to nowhere is a sadly apt depiction of how many people are living their lives.
Far too many people do not see any real purpose in life, so they just sort of slog through it. Oh, they may do a few exciting things here and there, but there is no real reason behind those things other than, basically, to break up the monotony of the day-in-day-out purposelessness of life. A few cheap thrills are thrown in to give some spice to life, but they have no ultimate reason except to get through another day.
And when the day is over–or the month, or the year–they are pretty much where they started. They may have a little more money or a few thrills from what they have done, but there is still no real purpose beyond just sort of slogging through life.
What an awful way to live! That’s certainly not the Christian life! While every day for the Christian may not be filled with thrills and chills, it is a day filled with the glory of God and with hope of an eternal joy with Him. Each moment of each day is seen as a gift from His gracious hand and anything good that comes into those moments is a reminder that He gives all good gifts (James 1:17).
And when a day is over–or a month, or a year, or even a lifetime–it has not just been a slumbering trip to nowhere. It has been a life filled with joy and peace and gratitude and hope. Some days might be filled with laughter and others with tears, but every day is filled with purpose, and it is a purpose far beyond anything we would think of for ourselves.
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AUTHOR: Adam Faughn
