This is the time of year when a lot of us are planning vacations.

But I don’t think any of us have taken a trip like the one Miles Hilton-Barber took.

Three months ago, this 58-year-old father of three flew halfway around the world, from London to Sydney Australia. It took him 59 days, through snowstorms, torrential rain and freezing temperatures.

That in itself is amazing.

But Miles Hilton-Barber…is blind.

He lost his sight 20 years ago to a hereditary condition. He managed to make the flight with a special audio device that announced his air speed and altitude. And he had some help, a co-pilot who was sighted. But Hilton-Barber did most of the work. And it took him more than halfway around the world.

When he landed in Sydney he told reporters, “It’s the fulfillment of an amazing dream. I’ve wanted to be a pilot since I was a kid.”

I thought it was an incredible story when I read it last spring. And I was reminded of it when I looked over this morning’s readings. Because in Luke’s gospel, we meet Jesus the traveler. He is “resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem,” and the gospel is about some of the people he meets along the way.

Like Miles Hilton-Barber, Jesus is journeying under difficult circumstances. He knows he is going to Jerusalem to die. And that may help explain the fatalistic tone of what he tells some of those he meets.

But His message to those he encounters is one that the blind pilot would appreciate and understand.

It’s very simple: Focus on what is before you. And trust that God will guide you.

Jesus tells the man who wants to say goodbye to his family: “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.”

It sounds so harsh. But it is also painfully wise. Don’t look back. Focus on what is before you. And go forward.

A farmer will tell you that if you’re plowing a field and keep looking over your shoulder, the furrows won’t be straight. And the crop may not grow the way you want.

Jesus’s advice is: Look to what needs to be done…not to what you’ve already done.

Because what’s done…is done.

How often do we worry about mistakes we’ve made…wrong choices…bad decisions? We can spend so much of our waking lives counting our regrets.

On the other hand, we can also spend too much time savoring past triumphs, polishing trophies, both real and imagined, that are so old, they’ve started to turn to rust.

Or we chew on the past, like a dog with a bone.

How much time do we spend asking ourselves “What if…”

What if…I had taken a different job?

What if…I had married a different person?

What if…I had exercised more, or procrastinated less?

We waste precious time putting our hand to the plow, looking to what was left behind.

A few years ago, when I was working on “60 Minutes II,” I wrote a profile of Madonna. The interviewer was Charlie Rose. And he asked her: “Do you have any regrets?”

I’ll never forget her answer: “No,” she said. “My mistakes made me who I am.”

Now, God knows, I don’t want to hold up Madonna as a great role model here. But what she said makes sense – and strikes me as something worth remembering. We are the products of our choices, both good and bad.

Sometimes, especially, the bad. We may not want to admit it, but often our sins have shaped us as much as our virtues – maybe even more.

And it doesn’t do any good to keep replaying them over and over. Those choices have been made. They are dead.

And as Jesus says tells the young man who wants to follow him: “Let the dead bury the dead.” Let the past take care of itself.

Focus on what is before you. And trust that God will guide you.

“You will show me the path to life,” the psalmist tells us today. “Fullness of joys in your presence.”

As Jesus was journeying to Jerusalem, perhaps he had that psalm in mind – following the path that God had cleared for him…trusting in the road he had to travel, even the one that ended at Calvary.

Remember the blind pilot, Miles Hilton-Barber. He couldn’t be concerned about where he had been. Only where he was headed. He embarked on that extraordinary journey with something we all need on the journey through life: trust. Miles Hilton-Barber trusted. He trusted that somehow he would arrive at his destination, that somehow he would defy the odds and achieve his goal. He trusted that he could do what others said was impossible.

He knew the risks. But you might say he journeyed with his eyes wide open. And with his heart wide open, too. A heart that knew how to simply surrender. And how to have faith. Faith that he would get where he needed, despite his difficulties.

I think Jesus had that kind of heart, too. And I think his message to us in the gospel today is one he was trying to impart to those he met on his journey to Jerusalem.

It is a message for all of us traveling through life — wherever the trip takes us, whatever and whoever we encounter along the way.

Despite what we may think, we aren’t flying blind.

Focus on what is before you.

And trust that God will guide you.