Journey is and has always been a primary paradigm for the way of the people of God. Journey is an important metaphor that stands in opposition to seeing ourselves as a settled people. Because settled faith can be comfortable, safe, and predictable, we too easily can become set in our ways; we become stuck.
That’s why an intentional and disciplined faith journey is crucial. Even when we journey in fits and starts as Abraham did, even when we don’t know where we’re going or exactly what we’re doing, even when we make mistakes or refuse what God is unfolding before us—even so we, like Abraham, can “hope against hope” that all this is going somewhere, somewhere good and right.
Like Abraham, who saw the fulfillment of God’s promise not with human eyes but with the eyes of hope and confidence, we too entrust ourselves to the one who is our Eternal Center, the one who generates all hope.
That faith reminds us why we need each other, why we need spiritual community: to encourage each other and to embody hope for one another throughout life’s journey.
Whenever we see ourselves journeying with Abraham, on the move with Paul, following Christ as the Way, then we can live with confidence that in this journey of understanding, of thought, of theology, of practice, of life, then we are on the way with God.
Even though we may feel sometimes like we’re going around in circles, maybe what we really are doing is progressing through the spiraling path of a cosmic labyrinth God is unfolding before us.
Read more at Charlotte Vaughan Coyle. Living in The Story: A Year to Read the Bible and Ponder God’s Story of Love and Grace (pp. 75-76). Resource Publications. Kindle Edition.
Readings for Living in The Story Week 4
