Pilgrims

Do you ever listen to a song and get stuck on the profound thought in a certain lyric? Music at its best boasts rhythm and poetry and soul and truth. Lately when Matt Maher's Everything and Nothing pops up on my playlist, I am arrested by one line: "We're all pilgrims on a journey to the truth."

In any circumstance, human beings seek truth. We find truth in the oddest places and often go wayward, but we endlessly seek meaning. For what purpose am I living? How should I choose to live? What moral code do I keep for myself? How do I interact with the world? Consciously and subconsciously, we all answer these questions daily in our quest for truth, and our lives and actions reflect our perceptions. "We're all pilgrims on a journey to the truth."

Here is the song if you have yet to hear it.



The journey obviously varies uniquely and unpredictably. That's the human experience. My question as a fellow pilgrim is this: Is there a common truth? Are we all looking for the same thing? Is there something universal and worthwhile from which every human being can draw truth and meaning?

My answer to this questions is YES. There is unequivocal, shared truth we are meant to pursue. Our world still baffles me at times. I have endless questions about our fallenness. Yet the intricate nature and vast immensity of what I see and observe leads me to believe a loving, active creator gives meaning to my existence. There is a God. There is love and hope. There is moral right and wrong. There is truth to be discovered on the journey.

That is why I am willing to give my life to this cause. That is why I am at seminary asking God to tread slowly with me as I churn through the ache of saying goodbye to the life I had and wondering where surrender will lead.

In my pilgrimage, I am thankful for so many co-journeyers, even if I at times fail to show my gratitude. God never intends us to be alone, though solitude weaves itself into our lives in necessary ways. In Everything and Nothing, Matt Maher goes back and forth between his own experience (I'm lost and found / I'm saved and drowned / I'm everything and nothing all at once) and the shared experience (Come let us discover something new / Cause we're all pilgrims on a journey to the truth / We're all wanderers relying on a man / To help us understand). That's the essence of humanity -- one and yet part of the whole. We need human connection, and we need our communities to walk with us.

Will you walk with me?