I have never thought of my life as a pilgrimage. Israel describes his life, his pilgrimage, as evil or unpleasant, and compares it to the pilgrimage of his father, Isaac, and his father's father, Abraham, and doesn't feel as though he has lived up to their expectations...simply not true...but what does it mean to embark or complete a pilgrimage?
From Dictionary.com:
1.
a journey, especially a long one, made to some sacred place as an act of religious devotion: a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
2.
any long journey, especially one undertaken as a quest or for a votive purpose, as to pay homage: a pilgrimage to the grave ofShakespeare.
So there you have it, a long journey that is undertaken as a devotional homage, a means to wrap yourself up in the understanding and purpose of whatever it may be you have chosen to journey for or towards. One example would be accepting and performing an honorable mission; but, for purposes of this blog, I think the best example of a pilgrimage is, in fact, the journey of life. Jacob had it right, life is a pilgrimage that each of us must accept and perform in devotion to our Savior and God. If we, with faith, accept that role, and understand our purpose in this probationary existence, then we are on a pilgrimage, our pilgrimage, our journey to that sacred place in the presence of God. What better example?
GENESIS 47:9
9 And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.I appreciate Jacob's humility but come on, his pilgrimage makes mine look like an exhaustive search for a penny so that I can free a gumball from a machine - quite pitiful!
~Kipling
No comments:
Post a Comment