A pilgrim, although often having a religious connotation, is defined as “one who journeys to foreign lands.”  That is what I am.  A pilgrim.  I travelled on faith, hoping to find a sacred place: Home.

People of faith make pilgrimages to places deemed holy.  There is no holy place here.  I did not journey far from my Home to bow and kneel to my God in a new place. My God was at Home and He travelled with me.  Like any good pilgrimage, my journey was difficult.  I did not crawl on hands and knees, did not scale steep mountains or climb ten thousand steps.  But I may as well have.  Instead, I tossed and turned, I wrung my hands.  I cried ten thousand tears.

I haven’t come here to touch a rock, to kiss a wall, to have a vision.  Like the pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth Rock, I have come for a better life.  I have come on the promise that I will find it here.  I have come because I believe that, in answer to a prayer, God laid out this path for me.  And like those early colonists,  I know there will be hardships and heartaches.  There is much work to be done.

“This hill though high I covent ascend;

The difficulty will not me offend;

For I perceive the way of life lies here.

Come, pluck up, heart; let’s neither faint nor fear.”

–Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan 1678