I don’t know why but the word ‘pilgrimage‘ keeps coming into my mind. My cousin sang about her week-long experience walking part of the Camino de Santiago, bringing me alongside with her rhythmic strumming. Someone else compared giving things up for Lent as joining with Jesus when He journeyed to Jerusalem and His death on the cross. Then I was reading Christy Lefteri’s The Beekeeper of Aleppo and read these words: ‘I can walk to the other side of the world and there will still be darkness… This darkness is inside me and has nothing to do with the outside world.’ That line struck me as the heart of the matter. It doesn’t matter how far we can walk or how beautiful the scenery, if we are struggling with the hardships of life, it is impossible to be impacted by the wonders close by.

At the minute I am largely housebound. But now I am beginning to understand that sitting in the same place everyday does not mean my experiences have stopped. We are all on a journey, however stuck we think we are. This is but one chapter in the book of your life. The pages will keep turning, you will keep growing. At times you will be in the ‘slough of despond’ like John Bunyan’s Christian, but hopefully there will be glorious mountain top experiences too.

It comforts me to think of life as always moving. Because that means difficult times pass and good ones arrive. The question is, can you believe that? Is there a sunny world of hope in you that will take you through the darkness? I hope and pray that we can look up and see that the dark clouds are always moving past, the bulbs are getting ready to burst into the light, better times are coming.

Can you join me on that path? Please do, as somehow that walk is easier when there’s someone beside you.