As you learned earlier, I now have a new team of girls surrounding me and running my Race with me. After we were placed together, we spent some time thinking and praying about who we want to be as a team and where we want to go from where we are starting together. One thing that we all desired for our team is to collectively pursue the Lord and grow together in him.
After discussing this, Fran, our squad mentor, taught us about a time in the Old Testament when the Ark of the Covenant, the tangible representation of the presence of the Lord, was taken away from God’s chosen people, Israel. For over 90 years, the Ark was somewhere other than Jerusalem, and for the majority of that time, it was in a town only 9.3 miles west of Jerusalem. The presence of God was so close, but the people waited almost a century to go get it and bring it back to dwell in the Tabernacle.
This message hit home for us. We don’t want to be a team that is so close to the presence of God, but fails to pursue him. We want to always be willing to go the 9.3 miles and beyond to seek the Lord so that his presence may dwell among us.
So we are going westward, towards his presence.
After hearing all this, I was reminded of other instances in Scripture that reinforce this concept. In Genesis 3:24, after Adam and Eve sinned, God sent them out of the garden. It says, “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (emphasis added). This seems to indicate that Adam and Eve headed east when they left, if that would be the way they might try to return. Adam and Eve were going east, away from their ideal and perfect relationship with the Lord to the west.
In Genesis chapter 4, Cain kills his brother, Abel. And in verse 16, it states, “Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden” (emphasis added). Again, we see Cain going east, away from the presence of the Lord, which would be to the west.
If we fast forward a few chapters to Genesis 13, we see that Abram and Lot are getting ready to separate. Lot, chooses to go east, toward Sodom and Gomorrah, to settle with his family, and Abram goes west. Genesis 13:11 says, “So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan Valley, and Lot journeyed east. Thus they separated from each other” (emphasis added).
In all of these instances, people going east are portrayed as going away from the presence of the Lord. We chose the name Westward because we want to be defined as women and as a team by our desire to continually move toward God. We want to orient our lives toward him, not away from him.
I think there is something special in a name. And I love that each time we introduce ourselves as a team, we will be declaring that we are a group that is going after the presence of the Lord. My prayer for all of us, here and at home, is that we would be people who seek the Lord and do not sit content with the Lord being near, but not among us.
