800 Freezing Miles from Anywhere!!!

May 2
3 min read

Updated: May 4

In the endless white expanse, a small mound broke the horizon. As explorer Matthieu Tordeur and glaciologist Heidi Sevestre skied toward it, the mound grew larger and took on a defined shape.

Racing to reach their goal, a golden head emerged from the snow! It was the bust of Vladimir Lenin left in 1958 by a Soviet expedition to this Southern Pole of Inaccessibility. At 808 miles from any coast and an average temperature of minus-58 degrees, this is as far away as one can get from civilization and warm human touch in Antarctica!!!

"We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost. We've all done our own thing, gone our own way." (Isaiah 53: 6, Message)

Desperate separation happens different ways. I know someone from a conservative Christian family whose powerful teenage endocrines drew them into early unmarried sex. Rejecting the guard gates of their childhood, marijuana was their next experimentation. A flirtatious gay swing took them farther from their root values and farther from parents who really were rooting for their child although the child felt judgment. World religions, hallucinogens, unhappy marriages, extraterrestrial fascination all added spin to the life odometer of one careening toward the Pole of Inaccessibility. They were way out there.

They felt alone. Parents and siblings were trying to get to them, but things in the family were so cold, parting the polar parka to even talk felt dangerous. They'd reached inaccessibility. Finally, Dad died. Strange how estrangement makes one think! The loner assumed they'd been written out of the family will. No way! Then, they received a check from their father's estate executor for $80,000! That child had gotten too far away. Obviously, he was missing out on a lot of love they could have been basking in! Their parents had wanted to be close! The child had wanted to be close. Particularly, Father tried. But email transcripts from that era reveal Reply messages filled with blame. No matter. That didn't stop the father's heart from pumping love out to that child every way it knew to pump it!

"As a father is kind to his children, so is the LORD kind to us." (Psalm 103:13, Easy)

"When I get up, You understand my thoughts from far away. You look over my path and my lying down. You know all my ways very well....Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or, where can I run away from where You are? If I go up to heaven , You are there! If I make my bed in the place of the dead, You are there! If I take the wings of the morning or live in the farthest part of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and Your right hand hold me." (Psalm 103:13, Easy)

Have you been abandoned romantically? Opened your heart to someone only to find out they were in it only for what they could get? Are you alone financially? Holding the bills which total up to more than one can handle? Does it seem a long way back to your Birth Family when bigger stronger truer huggers were happy to be responsible for you? Is it a long long way to someone who knows all about you? Sheds tears when you do? Knows what you are worried about and never tires of your weaker traits let alone your best? Let me answer for you.

Jesus is near. He wants to hear all about it all. And, He means it when He says,