Josh's Jottings: Summer is a Season of Pilgrimage

Summer is a season of travel, and in that sense, it can also be a season of pilgrimage. Last week, I went camping with family and a few friends, not just to breathe fresh mountain air, or mark Independence Day, but to seek out an environment of respite, spiritual clarity, and prayer. Travel opens up the possibility of new experiences, new friendships, new perspectives on God's world and the people and places that fill it. In that sense, travel gets us out of our familiar daily routines, and opens our eyes in new ways. No wonder God spoke to Moses for the first time when he was away from his comfortable familiar surroundings and in exile in the wilderness. Likewise, Paul encountered the power of Christ on the road and it changed him. 

Whether you are traveling for a vacation this summer, or journeying with our youth to Louisiana to serve others. Whether you will travel to a distant corner of the globe, or across town to see a friend that you visit too seldom, use this time to seek God out in the midst of the less familiar. 

The Gelasian Sacramentary, an ancient text of liturgies from the 400's, even includes a prayer for the travelers.

"O God of infinite mercy and boundless majesty, 

Whom no distance of place

Nor length of time

Can part from those for whom you care; 

Be with your servants everywhere, who trust in you,

And through all the ways in which they are to go, 

Be pleased to be their Guide and their Companion. 

May no adversity harm them, 

No difficulty oppose them; 

May all things turn out happily and prosperously for them; 

That by the help of your right hand,

Whatever they have reasonably asked for, 

They may quicky receive a good response; 

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, AMEN."