Jerusalem Was Ahead

I finished writing Mysterious Grace: Breaking Ground before I began reading The Way of a Pilgrim. Perhaps that is why the ending of the pilgrim’s story affected me as deeply as it did. I did not borrow his ending for my story. After writing my own, I discovered that his journey helped me understand something about mine.

At the end of The Way of a Pilgrim, the pilgrim is preparing for another journey. A benefactor has offered to provide the means for him to travel to Jerusalem. After all his wandering, struggles, encounters, and discoveries about prayer, another road has opened before him.

The book ends with hope.

Jerusalem is ahead.

He has not arrived, but he has every reason to believe he is on his way.

That reminded me of the ending of Mysterious Grace: Breaking Ground. Book One of my trilogy ends at a hopeful moment in my own life. I was young, engaged to be married, and looking toward the future with excitement. Things I had longed for seemed to be coming together. I could see a future ahead of me, and I had every reason to believe I knew where the road was leading.

I didn’t.

Neither, apparently, did the pilgrim.

I have now begun reading The Pilgrim Continues His Way. Early in that book, we discover that the journey to Jerusalem did not happen as he expected. His benefactor died before the pilgrim could reach him, and the plans that had seemed so certain suddenly changed.

Jerusalem had been ahead of him. Then the road turned.

That struck me because I know something about roads that turn.

My life did not unfold the way I imagined it would when I stood at the end of the story told in Breaking Ground. Wonderful experiences lay ahead, but so did disappointments, losses, mistakes, changes, and roads I never expected to travel.

Some of those roads resulted from choices I made. Others came from choices made by people around me, choices over which I had little or no control. Still others came simply from the circumstances of life—events that no one chose and no one could control.

I want to be very clear about something I have come to believe.

I do not believe God caused every painful thing that happened to me so that God could teach me a lesson.

I cannot look at suffering, tragedy, broken relationships, disappointment, or human mistakes and simply say, “God did that for a reason.” That has become too easy an explanation for things that are often far more complicated.

But I have come to believe something else.

God can meet us there.

Perhaps that is part of what grace means.

Near the end of The Way of a Pilgrim, there is a question about whether the grief and suffering encountered along the path of prayer might somehow be God’s rod. I do not understand that rod primarily as punishment or as God deliberately causing suffering. I think of the shepherd’s rod—the image from Psalm 23 of guidance, protection, correction, and presence along the road.

Looking back over my own pilgrimage, I can see times when the road I wanted disappeared. At the time, I saw only disappointment. Sometimes I fought against it. Sometimes I made another choice. Sometimes someone else’s choice changed my direction. Sometimes life simply happened.

But the pilgrimage continued.

And something happened to me along the way.

I learned.

I changed.

I met people I never would have met if everything had gone according to my plans. I encountered ideas I might never have considered. Some of my certainties were challenged. My understanding of other people grew. My understanding of myself changed. Even my understanding of God became larger.

None of that makes the painful things good.

It does mean they did not have to be wasted.

That may be one of the affirmations I am receiving from reading The Way of a Pilgrim after writing Breaking Ground. I once thought pilgrimage was mostly about getting somewhere. Now I wonder whether pilgrimage has just as much to do with who we become while we are getting there.

The pilgrim thought he was going to Jerusalem.

The young man at the end of Breaking Ground thought he knew something about where his road was leading too.

Neither knew what was around the bend.

There is something beautiful about that to me now. At the end of Breaking Ground, I don’t want to whisper into that young man’s ear and warn him about everything that is coming. I want to let him stand there with his hope. His excitement was real. His dreams were real. The future he imagined was real to him.

Let him have Jerusalem ahead of him.

There will be time enough for the road to turn.

That is where Planting Seeds, the second book of Mysterious Grace, begins to take us. The seeds will not all grow as expected. There will be sunshine and rain, good soil and difficult ground. There will be choices and consequences, joy and grief, beginnings and endings.

But grace will be there too.

Maybe that is what I see more clearly now at this point in my pilgrimage. Life has given me something very different from what the young man in Breaking Ground imagined. I would never say that everything happened because God planned it that way.

I will say that God was not absent from it.

Grace kept appearing.

Sometimes I recognized it. Sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I may have walked right past it and only recognized it years later when I looked back down the road.

The destination I imagined changed many times.

The pilgrimage continued.

And somehow, along roads I would never have chosen and through experiences I could never have imagined, I received lessons, relationships, understanding, and grace beyond anything that young man could have dreamed.

Perhaps Jerusalem was never simply a place at the end of the road.

Perhaps the gift has also been the road itself.

I am still a pilgrim.

And there is still more road ahead.

Sacred Writings

“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

— Philippians 3:12

A Pilgrim’s Prayer

Gracious God,

Thank you for meeting me along the road.

Thank you for the roads that brought joy and for being present with me on the roads that brought disappointment and sorrow. Forgive me for the choices I have made that led me away from where I needed to be, and give me grace toward those whose choices changed my journey.

Help me accept that there are things in life none of us can control.

Do not let the painful places be wasted. Teach me through what I have experienced. Open my eyes to the people I meet along the way. Give me wisdom to recognize grace when it appears and faith to trust you when I cannot see where the road is leading.

When the Jerusalem I imagined disappears from the horizon, remind me that the pilgrimage is not over.

You are still present.

Grace is still at work.

There is still more road ahead.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

And help me press on, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Amen.