In 2009 we hope to take a wider look at Life's Journey as seen through the eyes and thoughts of other travelers on the Yellow Brick Journey. Today we begin with Dag Hammarskjold who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 until 1961. Many of his private thoughts were later published in a book titled simply Markings.
Dag Hammarskjold was born in Sweden in 1905 and died on September 18, 1961, in an air crash will flying to Northern Rhodesia to negotiate a cease fire.
I have long valued the phrase with which he begins one writing in 1950:
The longest journey
Is the journey inwards.
I pray that 2009 might for many of us be a journey to our inner life as we become more in touch with who we are as a child of God. I believe that this longer journey will help us to better understand who we might yet become.
Again, in 1952, Hammarskjold wrote these words:
How long the road is.
But, for all the time the journey
has already taken,
how you have needed
every second of it
in order to learn
what the road passes - by.
I pray that during this coming year you may value each moment of journey as you keep all your senses open to learn as you continue your journey down this yellow brick road of life.
