The Pilgrimage of the Soul

I remember the first time I read the book, “Hinds Feet on High Places”.  It resonated some place within me as I read of the journey of “Much Afraid”.  She had received an invitation from the Shepherd to leave her old, familiar home in the Valley of Humiliation and follow Him to the high places.  She accepted, had a seed of love planted deep in her heart and was told to be ready to go when the Shepherd called.  She was given two companions, “Sorrow and “Suffering.”  She had no idea what the road before her held.  To stay put would mean misery and death.  To leave would mean trusting another with her life. She chose to follow into the unknown with the most fragile of faith.

It wasn’t long in her pilgrimage before it appeared the path was headed straight up into the heights. The Shepherd had kept His promise, finally she would climb to that place her heart longed to be.  But just around the bend she saw something startling.  The road turned and headed down deep into the desert.  It was in the desert that her life truly began to take it’s own journey.  She learned to accept with joy the road that had been laid before her.  She began to learn what it felt like to trust.

It’s often been the same in my pilgrimage.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the road turns, taking me on paths I didn’t anticipate.  I’m beginning these days to understand a bit more that the journey is not the destination, the destination is the journey.  It’s not about where I am going, it’s about what is transpiring on the paths that look so very different from what I thought they would be.

Will I call good what God calls good regardless of how it looks, feels, and seems?

I’m taken back to remember the story of the release of the children of Israel from captivity. After years of slavery finally they are free.  They weren’t taken on the shorter route out of Egypt.  Instead God took them the longer way around, with the Egyptians hot on their trail, dead ending at the Red Sea. They couldn’t understand it all. Why would God release them to be pursued and captured again? 

What they didn’t know was that on the shorter route there was an enemy they were unprepared to face.  The longer route, though more difficult physically, would save their lives in the end.  They wanted the easiest, most comfortable route.  God wanted their protection and their trust.  He knew that a miracle, a revelation of His heart for them, waited off the banks of that sea.

They grumbled and complained.  They wanted to go back to Egypt.  At least they knew what to expect there.  At least they had some control over what went on in their day to day lives.    

It’s easy to want to go back to the familiar.  Trusting requires all of me, living in what I’m accustomed to, not so much.  But life is found in the winding turns that take us down paths we didn’t anticipate.  For those unsuspected places ask me once again, will I call good what God calls good no matter how it seems, looks, or feels?

I think of the hymn I learned as a child.  “Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus, just to take Him at His Word, just to rest upon His promise, just to know, thus saith the Lord.”  “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust you, how I’ve proved you over and over.” “Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh for grace to trust you more.”

The road seldom looks like I think it will.  Sometimes it challenges my faith to the very core.  It’s why I’ve come to this new place to write.  Because the truth is the journey is the destination.  For in the midst of the terrains that can change on a daily basis, God is found.   

The terrain has changed here recently in my life.  A job layoff does that sort of thing.  I’m challenged once again to what I will stand in.  Will I judge God’s goodness based on who He is or what He does.  It’s the question that haunts me in the core of my soul.  

What about you?  Where is the path taking you these days?