The Ultimate Far Horizon

“Space, the final frontier…” begins a popular television series now in perpetual re-run and it does speak to a yearning of mankind to always explore new regions or territories. Such desires led to the ‘discovery’ of the New World and the eventual settlement of what has become the myriad of cultures composing North and South America.
The push to explore where we have not been before, to go beyond our present horizons and see what is there can lead us into places we’d have been better not going, but the urge to go is still within us to discover what is beyond the horizon.
Bob Dylan’s “Beyond the Horizons” expressed this feeling of wanderlust;
“Beyond the horizon, behind the sun
At the end of the rainbow life has only begun
In the long hours of twilight ‘neath the stardust above
Beyond the horizon it is easy to love.”
The “…final frontier…” that I long to explore is the one that leads Home. It is a Place that I’ve never been before, but to where some of my dearest friends now reside and it is a place where, as Mr. Dylan put it (perhaps not meaning the Home I refer to here), it is a place where it is easy to love for the One who resides there is, by definition, Love.
Recently my wife gave me a gift that was unintentional; she had picked up the norovirus but thought it was food poisoning. After she had recovered and gone back to work two days later I began to experience the same symptoms (in my case exacerbated by the fact I’d had an medical procedure that had left me somewhat dehydrated already). Within a few hours I realized that I was seriously ill, but my conscious mind didn’t take the steps necessary to get help; I just continued my frequent ‘pilgrimages’ to the bathroom until finally I was too weak to even do that.
When Kathy came home she found me essentially unresponsive, pale, and sweaty with a barely perceptible pulse. She called 911 and Parkwood VFD and Durham EMS arrived shortly thereafter and discovered my systolic blood pressure was around 40…not a good thing. In the ensuing trip to the hospital I had a 8 to 10 second period of asystole (where the heart stops) and was the center of all manner of attention once we arrived at DUMC ED.
One day several weeks later, Kathy and I were talking and the realization came to me that my subconscious had perhaps decided that this was as good a time as possible to go ahead and explore that ultimate far horizon. Had she been delayed in leaving work that day (as does happen frequently) she would have come home to find me beyond that horizon and, while glad to still be here, there is a part of me that wishes for that Place.
Yes, we yearn to explore, to “…boldly go where we haven’t gone before…” and to see Heaven and the One whose name is Love is my desire; I just guess I’ll have to wait for another day.