Pilgrims all

We are pilgrims all on the journey towards unity with God and one another.  Our faith journey is filled with pilgrimages, some very intentional and some spontaneous movements of the Holy Spirit.  Just recently I went on an intentional pilgrimage with some of the youth of the church I serve, an event my conference calls Pilgrimage.  Youth and youth workers travel from their homes and home churches to gather together for worship and teaching.  This year, well over 5,000 of us sang God's praise in a coliseum.  What struck me during this pilgrimage is that the real joy of these events is the connections.  The Body of Christ is a powerful community.  We are more than community, we are family.  We need to stop at times and gather to remember how God loves us and that we are not alone but connected through our relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ His Son.  When we gather in large numbers, the presence of the Holy Spirit is evident through the sights and sounds all around us.  For those of us who come empty, Pilgrimage can be a time of refueling through worship, through Holy Communion, through spending time with old friends, through making new friends, through learning ways to serve, through serving.

Connection seems to be the word that resonated and reverberated throughout this pilgrimage for me.  I reconnected with youth from my first appointment as well as their adult leaders.  In the massive stream of youth and workers I would suddenly see a familiar face and interrupt the momentum of the stream to stop and hug this kindred soul.  There was one hug in particular that stood out for me.  It came from a woman "bursting with beautiful."  It was filled with grace and peace and a reminder from God that some connections are meant to be more than fleeting moments on the journey.  As  pilgrims all we journey together which means we are to nurture our connections with one another.  God is active in those connections and through those connections we can be agents of transformation.

The young pilgrims with whom I ventured on this sojourn brought some amazing adults with them.  We all lived together for three days and two nights.  The fire pit was the center of our circle of conversation or rather the center of our musical chairs.  Sometimes it even had a fire.  The frost on the tent did not cool the warmth of God's love.  Their bodies shivered from the cold while they roasted marshmallows late that first night.  Even in the cold they could speak of what they had heard about God's love. 

Two phrases continue to haunt me from our pilgrimage, "God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it," and "bursting with beautiful."  I was grateful that these youth and adults could hear those words, that I could hear those words.  Words are inadequate to describe how I saw beautiful bursting out of the youth.  The adult volunteers were tangible proof of God's love for each young person present.  So very grateful that each who came allowed joy, allowed love, allowed God to touch their lives and my life through them on our pilgrimage.  We are pilgrims all.

Allow joy, allow love, allow God,
One of Many