Further Up & Further In; Thoughts for the Pilgrimage

Some things seem too familiar to be unknown.

The peculiar lilting of a laugh.

The certain bending of a road.

An uncurtained window frame spilling yellow light.

Perhaps a face...are we sure we haven't passed this way before?

So it is, that we the pilgrims, sojourning in this foreign land, yet find glimpses of a home.

Left behind
Waiting ahead
Half-imagined
Eagerly sought

Life isn't what we'd thought it would be when we first heard the call to, "Leave your father's home and go to the land that I will show you."

Sometimes, the old seems new and the new, intimately old.

How is is that, speaking the same language, we can yet so thoroughly misunderstand?
How is it that language barriers are sometimes no barrier at all?
How is it that the new can fit as easily as last year's sandals?

So it is for those born of the Spirit...

It's by leaving home that we learn to construct our own; to pick up the tools of faith, hope, and love, and to build something new but familiar.

A child is born of promise. 
A temple is made of living stones.
The homeless are set in families.
The crooked ways are made straight.
The frontier becomes the familiar.

So it is for the citizens of the Kingdom...

Through the strangeness, the discomfort, the shift and the change, we yet find ourselves coming, again and again, back home. For wherever one or two are gathered in the name of our King, there we may sit in the midst of them and say, "Here are my mother, and my sisters, and my brothers."

Together, we look at the good things of this earth, the temporary dwelling places we've made here that are foreshadowings of the eternal home that awaits us, and we press forward. The glimpses of what lies ahead sustain us and spur us onward.

Further up. Further in.