...and pilgrimage…

Hospitality took up our focus for Thursday morning, so we deliberately left our thinking about pilgrimage to the end of the day. We got together in the evening, having said goodbye to Hannah who couldn’t stay for the remaining couple of days. The guys had been out to Beauchamp house to take some kit over for next weekend’s YouCan conference. (more on that later)…I had the opportunity to help the local City Mission in a easter service they were holding.

We gathered together and set up the room, jack gave me his bongos and I was looking forward to helping out with a few worship songs. The City Mission here works with many many people in need. Homeless, drug addicts, alcoholics, travellers. Often, it appears; their work sadly goes unnoticed by local authorities and shockingly by local churches. But they give food to the hungry, clothe those without clothing and pray for others who need healing. They give hope and Jesus to everyone they meet. Week in, week out. Theirs is a ministry worth commending.

So we gathered and worshipped to the Lord, not knowing if anyone would turn up. Over 50 people were invited and about the same number probably said they’d come. An extra swig of whisky, or one extra high would wipe their mind of any such commitment however, so we waited and hoped.

A fair few came. And as the evening drew on, songs were sung, mime’s acted and stories told. During a song focussing on the Fathers love for us, one lady burst into tears and walked out, followed by some friends. I found out after that God had touched her deeply and she had become a Christian. Amazing.!

Anyway, we all got together to pray again and think about pilgrimage and share some thoughts on the day. We looked at how the word pilgrimage is not confined to just to our first impressions; such as a journey to a sacred place. In fact, one of the interesting things is that none of the practises in the boiler room are what you quite expect; they all shoot off in loads of directions, and probably need whole weeks in themselves to spend time thinking, exploring, praying and experiencing.

The practise of pilgrimage is more about being mobile in various contexts. In the praying community context, it is an encouraging not to get stuck in the house, so as not to become insular. The practise of pilgrimage recognises that we each journey with God. And, wherever He tends to lead us, we need to have the same attitude of Moses, saying ‘unless your presence goes with us – we will not go’. A physical pilgrimage, like a walk, or a journey to somewhere that is personally special to you can represent or be a symbol of your journey with God thought, which in a way links this strongly to our thinking of creativity.

Taking guidance once again from PunkMonk, we summarised the various practical forms that pilgrimage can take.

- a traditional pilgrimage
- a virtual pilgrimage (learning about a place or country so you can pray for that place)
- an individual pilgrimage, or spontaneous journey to a place where you can ‘be alone with God’, using it to invest in your spiritual walk with God
- a mobile mission team – we had an idea about travelling through Devon and Cornwall and setting up a prayer tent on various beaches each day. We were quite excited about this idea of pilgrimage!

So, with that in mind, we had a time of open prayer; thanking God for the day and giving him our time of rest. Then, we made our own pilgrimage to our bedrooms, with a welcome destination of sleep.!