Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

In the Chaplain’s Corner last week, I wrote about wilderness experiences. These are times when we feel lost, when we don’t know what to do or where to go, where we feel as if we are not making progress in the right direction. The opposite of a wilderness experience is when we are on a journey, when we are moving confidently in the path that we believe to be ordained by God.

This message is similar to a devotional I gave last month at the Women’s Fellowship Luncheon, so a few of you might remember it. I said that when I began to pray about the message, the verse above from John 14:6 came almost immediately to mind.

That’s an absolute statement if I ever heard one. You know that some things are flexible, but there is no wiggle room in this statement. We can be vegetarians or meat eaters. We can travel by car, on foot, air, train or any number of ways. But in this verse, there is absolutely no flexibility or option. Jesus is THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE. NO ONE comes to the Father except through Jesus.

And by saying that Jesus is the way, this implies to me a journey, and I have always liked that analogy of life, comparing our lives to a journey. The book Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan, which has been so popular through the years, is an allegory about Christian’s journey to the Celestial City, which is Heaven. Now some of us are on a pilgrimage type of journey—we have a destination and we are working hard to get there. If you are on a journey, but don’t have a destination in mind, then you might be more about wandering in the wilderness, and as we discussed last week, that’s okay, too, as long as we realize it. You can learn a lot about yourself and about God when you are in the wilderness, if you will let yourself.

Last month I had the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. with a friend. My friend has a good innate since of direction, but I do not. She thinks she can’t read a map however, but I can, or at least I thought I could. The first day we were there, we just decided to wander. We didn’t have any tours booked, so we just decided to get the lay of the land. We asked the concierge at the hotel which way to the Washington Monument, which is a central point for all the famous sites. We thought that would get us going in the right direction, and it did. A special feature is that you can see it from a long way off, so that also gave us a reference point. We enjoyed our day, and all the rest of the time we were there. On Friday, our last day, we went to Mt. Vernon by boat, and returned to D.C. about 3 pm. We had plans for the evening, but nothing on the agenda for the afternoon, so I said I wanted to see the Museum of the Bible. It’s relatively new, opened less than two years. We didn’t have a lot of time because it closed at 5, so we Ubered there. It was amazing (that’s perhaps another Chaplain’s Corner), and then it was closing time. We decided to walk back to the hotel.

I can tell you that we were still enjoying ourselves, but our feet were beginning to feel the accumulated stress of so much walking on concrete so we didn’t want to waste any steps on going in the wrong direction. So me, the map reader, gets out the map and says, we are on 4^th, and therefore we should cross the street and walk up the block, and if we hit 3rd, we know we are ok. So that’s what we did, and we hit 6th. Uh, oh. We turned around and went the other direction, and then I said we should cross North Carolina Avenue next, but we didn’t. Uh, oh. So we stopped and asked a woman in uniform how to get to our hotel and she said go up the next light and take a right. What? That couldn’t be correct. By my calculation, that would mean we were going in the opposite direction, away from our hotel. But we did it anyway, walked to the next light, took a right, and guess what—the Capitol was right in front of us! Thank you!!!

As grateful as we were to get our bearings, I was also stunned. How could this be? How could I have been so off?

Well, first off, was I using the right map? I’m happy to say that I was. I knew the Museum was on 4^th Street. If I had been looking for a map with a 4^th Street, many city maps would do. Even a map of Nashville would do. But just because it has 4^th Street doesn’t mean that it’s the right 4^th Street. I need to be sure that I am using the correct map. That seems obvious, but you know that we often look for spiritual maps based on the qualities we desire; perhaps we look for spiritual maps that worship the idols we prefer to worship. In spiritual terms, that might be like saying I’m looking for a religion that is all about love. Many religions are about love. New Age religion, for example, is more about love of self, and it would be very validating of the way I might selfishly prefer to feel and live my life. But only one religion defines love as first and foremost about a relationship between ourselves and God, and that is the only Truth and our only hope. The Bible is our best map, it is the TRUTH, and it will not steer us wrong.

Well, the good news is that I was using the right map, so again, what had I done wrong? Come to find out, I had calculated our location incorrectly. The Museum of the Bible is on 4^th Street, but somehow I had plotted it into the southeast rather than the southwest quadrant of D.C. So my lefts should have been rights, etc. That would be like trying to get to the Women’s Campus on 8^th Ave. S, rather than 8^th Ave. N. (or Rosa Parks as it is now). The spiritual comparison is ensuring that we are in right standing with God each and every day, before we head out on our journey. Even with the right map, or right belief system about God, we must re-orient ourselves continually with God, through prayer, confession, reading our Bible. These are basics, but they are most important to us as we continue our journey, our pilgrimage, to the Promised Land, the Celestial City, Heaven.

That last comparison I will make is about landmarks and advisors. The way I found out that I had calculated the location incorrectly was when we stopped to ask directions. We found a woman in a Park Service Uniform, so we knew she would be knowledgeable. She had the right credentials. When we were walking around town earlier in the week in the National Mall area with all the monuments, there were directional signs everywhere pointing us to the different memorials. That was very helpful. But I can’t tell you how relieved we were on that last day to see the Capital, just about three blocks away. Even though I knew I was not where I thought I should be, I knew that it was where it was supposed to be, and I could get my bearings. At last, we knew where we were! I love the memorials that are designated in the Bible. The Temple, the rainbow, the 12 Stones from the Jordan River are all tangible reminders of the majesty and power of God and what He has done for us. Weekly worship, and even the things we celebrate on a regular basis such as the Lord’s Supper and baptism are those reminders that help us to be sure that we are going in the right direction, heading toward our final destination.

So, when you are on your journey, be sure that you have the right map—the Bible, that you are orienting yourself regularly through prayer, confession, and reading and memorizing Scripture, and that you are taking advantage of landmarks and directional signs such as belonging to a Bible-believing church where you can participate in life groups and participate in corporate worship with the ordinances such as the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

May God bless you on your journey.

In Christ,

Judy