Quotes About Journey

The stories we create to understand ourselves become the narratives of our lives, explaining the accidents and choices that have brought us where we are: what I'm good at, what I care about most, and where I'm headed.

Indeed, the more void the universe may be of meaning, the more precious the lanterns by which man picks his little way through it.

When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on an ancient spiritual journey.

What makes the Bible God's Word isn't its uncanny historical accuracy, as some insist, but the sacred experiences these stories point to, beyond the words themselves. Watching these ancient pilgrims work through their faith, even wrestling with how they did that, models for us our own journeys of seeking to know God better and commune with him more deeply.

was learning to trust God enough (what a concept) to know that, like family (the Bible calls him "Father" after all), he will come through no matter what, that his love and commitment to me is deeper than how my brain happens to be processing information at any given moment, to trust that God will be with me, not despite the journey but precisely because I was trusting God enough to take it.

When we open the Bible and read it, we are eavesdropping on an ancient spiritual journey. That journey was recorded over a thousand-year span of time, by different writers, with different personalities, at different times, under different circumstances, and for different reasons. In

I feel it is part of the mystery of faith that things normally do not line up entirely, and so when they don't, it is not a signal to me that the journey is at an end but that I am still on it. As I reflect on my own experience and that of many others far wiser than I, God seems willing to help that process along.

Our level of insight does not determine our level of trust. In fact, seeking insight rather than trust can get in the way of our walk with God.

I hear Aslan's words to Shasta: "'Child,' said the Lion, 'I am telling you your story. . . . I tell no one any story but his own.

One of the great comforts of Israel's epic is that it contains raw expressions of fierce doubt and lack of trust in God embraced by the ancient Israelites as part of their faith. I am thankful to God for this Bible rather than a sanitized one where spiritual struggles of the darkest kind are brushed aside as a problem to be fixed rather than accepted as part of the journey of faith.

Christians today have more in common with the Israelites wandering through a lonely and threatening desert or exiled to a hostile land than with Paul and most other New Testament writers. The Old Testament doesn't speak in the booming voice of imminent triumph. It speaks of generation after generation of the faithful and not so faithful, of successes and failures, of God's presence and God's absence.

Doubt means spiritual relocation is happening. It's God's way of saying, "Time to move on.

Rather than defining faithfulness as absolute conformity to authority and tribal identity, a trust-centered faith will value in others the search for true human authenticity that may take them away from the familiar borders of their faith, while trusting God to be part of that process in ourselves and others, even those closest to us. The choice of how we want to live is entirely ours.

Doubt tears down the castle walls we have built, with the false security and permanence they give, and forces us outside to walk a lonely, trying, yet cleansing road. In those times, it definitely feels like God is against us, far away, or absent altogether. But what if the darkness is actually a moment of God's presence that seems like absence, a gift of God

Wisdom is about the lifelong process of being formed into mature disciples, who wander well along the unscripted pilgrimage of faith, in tune to the all-surrounding thick presence of the Spirit of God in us and in the creation around us.

Andrew Perriman at "P.OST" (postnost.net).

The way forward is to let go of that need to find the answers we crave and decide to continue along a path of faith anyway (as Qohelet would say). That kind of faith is not a crutch, but radical trust.

no one lives in the scripted places of the Bible all the time, where God shows up as planned, tells us exactly what we need to do, and things work out

The story of Adam and Eve is a preview of Israel's long journey in the Old Testament as a whole.

my disruptive experiences are not outside impositions to or an attack on my faith, but are the soil out of which my faith matures and takes shape.

Getting there is all about dying, and each cycle of dying and rising we come to in our lives brings us, I believe, to greater insight into our deep selves, where Christ lives "in us" and our lives are "hidden" in God.

Doubt signals that this process of dying and rising is underway. Though God feels far away, at that moment God may be closer than we realize—especially if "know what you believe" is how we're used to thinking of our faith.

Rulebook Bible reading" shortchanges the depth and raw reality of Israel's own journey of faith in God.

I'VE BEEN ON A JOURNEY of rediscovering the Bible and the God behind it for over thirty years and I don't see that journey ending any time soon.