Saturday 18 January 2020

The landscape of faith

I thought until recently I had some sort of understanding of the geography, as it were, of the faith; after all, I've talked it, prayed it, professed it, preached it for 50+ years. I thought I had a 'map', with, if not all the details (by no means all the details!) then at least the salient features; baptism, prayer, the sacraments, etc.
But a hard evaluation has shown me that I have some understanding of the small hinterland around me, and that is all. Why I was so foolish to think that I had a bigger picture, I can only put down to vanity and pride.
My thoughts go back to Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress'- that seminal book which has had so much influence on personal devotion in English homes since its publication in 1678. (Since when it's never been out of print, I'm told). A grand landscape emerges in the book- as it does in C S Lewis's 'Narnia' chronicles. Christian ranges far and wide through rivers, bogs, mountains, byways, highways and the rest to come to the Celestial City. And all these places have their symbolic meanings; compared to which my narrow and small experience is as nothing.

'Bloom where you are planted' says the adage. So although my experience, range, understanding, and practice of the faith may be, as it were a small garden, my task is to nurture that, and venture out from there and learn to inhabit a bigger picture. The Delectable Mountains still call. Here is opportunity to tend a small garden, with my eyes and heart ready to explore a grander landscape. 

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