Faith Journey 4 - Maps ...

Tuesday, Feb 1, 2011. When you go on a journey, you need a map. Today, that sometimes seems easy. I have online maps on my touch phone, the phone even shows me where I am on the map, with a little blue dot and an arrow indicating the direction of my movement.

Maps are important …

Navigation today seems easier than ever. With the global positioning system we can determine our position everywhere on earth with a precision of some meters. Does it mean that navigation is no topic any more?

I thought so until I was hiking in the black forest recently, and my mobile phone could not get a connection to the next base station. Immediately, the navigation stopped. The phone could not download new maps and we were lucky that someone from the group had the old fashioned paper maps with him.

When we talk about the land of faith, we also need maps. We need to navigate our way into it and through it. We need guidance where we are, what is where and how things are in this land of faith. Maps are the knowledge we get about God, about the world, about his goals and his character, about what he does and what he does not.

We need to be aware that there are various maps, and that it is helpful to have good maps of people who know the country very well. Practically, the bible will be our core guide. But there is a broad range of Christian literature available, which gives many hints, ideas and inspiration.

Maps and the Original …

When I studied, I had some friends who have grown up in the mountains. They came from the south, and they had never been at the sea. They have been dreaming of the sea. They heard about it. They had seen pictures and films. But they have never been there.

Then, one day, they traveled to the sea. There, with the original, it was different from all the dreams, from all the longing, from all descriptions. When they smelled the wind and the sand and the salt. When they were standing there at the broad beach of sand and stones … it was just so much better and more fantastic than all the descriptions. They started to be a part of it, the little man and the huge sea.

Our journey into the land of faith is a little like the experience with the sea. We might have heard about it. We might know some things. But it is important to go ourselves, to travel there and to enter the land. It is important to experience the original land, not just a shadow of it. We need to travel there! ... more texts