pilgrimage on Exile

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgri...

Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgrims making their way to ...

I believe my vocation is essentially that of a pilgrim and an exile in life, that I have no proper place in the world, but that for that reason I am in some sense to be the friend and brother of peopl...

I have chosen to focus on this psalm [119] because it formed the important center of Celtic praise. In Ireland it was once referred to as The Biait . The word comes from Psalm 119: 1, which begins B...

Preaching Commentary Preaching Angle: Irony When we discover a bit of irony in life, we feel like we’ve struck gold. When we stumble upon a bit of irony in Scripture, it’s holy gold! Maybe you read...

Preaching Angle: Irony When we discover a bit of irony in life, we feel like we’ve struck gold. When we stumble upon a bit of irony in Scripture, it’s holy gold! Maybe you read this sentence and didn...

A pilgrim is anyone who is out of his own country.

It is good to be between a ruined house of bandage and a holy promised land.

Saul of Tarsus did not intend to be a pilgrim when he set off to go from Jerusalem to Damascus. Indeed, why would any pilgrim make that journey? Pilgrims went to Jerusalem, not away from it. No: Saul,...

Pilgrimage is a marinating process. The Bible is bursting with people who traveled to places of retreat where God seasoned and tenderized them, preparing them to take the next step of the journey. Mos...

Here’s a true story, from the year 891, of those who cast off in an embodied journey to live “in a state of pilgrimage, for the love of God.” Three Irish pilgrims, Dubslane, Macbeth, and Maelinmun, ma...

O Thou, God of all long desirous roaming, Our hearts are sick of fruitless homing, And crying after lost desire. Hearten us onward! as with fire Consuming dreams of other bliss. The best Thou givest, ...

If I rest, I rust.

You’re not a pilgrim if you stay where you are.

Road Trips in Scripture While the definitions of “oceans” and “lakes” had to be qualified a bit in order to relate biblical locations to our present-day vacations, road trips—like mountains—can be fo...

Allow the presence of God to be the bridge through your uncertainty. The axis of uncertainty is disorientation, and let’s face it, who wants to be spinning in all directions while in transition? Resea...

Pilgrim’s Progress smells of prison, for it was written in one. Thrown in jail for preaching the gospel without a license, Bunyan wrote a story in his cell. It is a story about life’s deepest question...

Pilgrimage happens when you’re not moving. You learn when you’re unlearning. Revelation comes in gulps that leave you gasping, but sometimes it seems to come in the slow accumulation of small insights...

Let us begin with a question. Do you really know how to enjoy the world? Do you know how to enjoy yourself? One of the greatest parables in the New Testament has to do with the search for enjoyment an...

When in some future time I shall sit in a madly crowded assembly With music and dancing around me, and the wish arises to retire Into the loneliest loneliness, I shall think of Iona.

Leader: How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! People: My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God. Leader: Blessed are ...

In all trouble you should seek God. You should not set Him over against your troubles, but within them. God can only relieve your troubles if you in your anxiety cling to Him. Trouble should not reall...

“It is good once in a while to feel oneself in the hands of God,” Søren Kierkegaard once wrote, “and not always eternally slinking around the familiar nooks and corners of a town where one always know...

Pilgrim (parepidēmos) tells us we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ.

He who would valiant be ‘gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy follow the Master. There’s no discouragement Shall make him once relent, His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

On the highroad to death Trudging, not eager to get To that city, yet the way is still too long for my patience -teach me a travel song, Master, to march along As we boys used to shout When I was a yo...

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination.  Today we move forward to Saul on...

“For in their hearts doth Nature stir them so Then people long on pilgrimage to go And palmers to be seeking foreign strands To distant shrines renowned in sundry lands.”

The year was 1522. Luther dipped his pen into the ink. Eleven weeks had passed since he began translating the Bible, and the project was almost complete. Although his work would enrage the papacy and ...