Quotes about Journey

To live only for some future goals is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. But of course, without the top you can't have the sides. It's the top that defines the sides.

Gabriel Marcel wrote that life is not so much a problem to be solved as a mystery to be explored.

There are no shortcuts in growing up. The path to maturity is long and arduous. Hurry is no virtue. There is no secret formula squirreled away that will make it easier or quicker. But stories help.

For centuries this psalm was sung on the road as throngs of people made the ascent to Jerusalem for festival worship. Our imaginations readily reconstruct those scenes. How great to have everyone sharing a common purpose, traveling a common path, striving toward a common goal, that path and purpose and goal being God.

Traveling in the way of faith and climbing the ascent to Christ may be difficult, but it is not worrisome. The weather may be adverse, but it is never fatal. We may slip and stumble and fall, but the rope will hold us.

Psalm 134, The final Song of Ascents, provides the evidence. The way of discipleship that begins in an act of repentance concludes in a life of praise.

religion is an inconvenience only to those who are traveling against the grain of creation, at cross-purposes with the way that leads to redemption.

We are traveling in the light, toward God who is rich in mercy and strong to save. It is Christ, not culture, that defines our lives. It is the help we experience, not the hazards we risk, that shapes our days.

For those who choose to live no longer as tourists but as pilgrims, the Songs of Ascents combine all the cheerfulness of a travel song with the practicality of a guidebook and map. Their unpretentious brevity is excellently described by William Faulkner. "They are not monuments, but footprints. A monument only says, 'At least I got this far,' while a footprint says, 'This is where I was when I moved again.'"

For we're newcomers at this, with a lot to learn, and not too long to learn it.

David's isn't an ideal life but an actual life.

Perseverance does not mean "perfection." It means that we keep going. We do not quit when we find that we are not yet mature and there is a long journey still before us.