The Lord Is Your Keeper

If you're like most suburbanites, you're likely gearing up to make a pilgrimage in the next several weeks, probably to a place you've been year after year. The people of Israel, too, had a ritual of travel - three times every year from wherever they were to the Holy City of Jerusalem, to celebrate God's primary festivals at the Temple there. Jerusalem is on the highest peak in Palestine, so wherever you were coming from, the journey was pretty much ascent the whole way. This was and is a wonderfully obvious metaphor for God's people: life is a Godward journey, uphill, without an SUV.Throughout those years of regular pilgrimage, Israel's inspired artists put together their ultimate road trip mix tape. The Psalms of Ascents are a collection of 15 songs that set the mood and capture the experience - maybe not completely, but faithfully - of what it's like to journey upward and upward and upward again. Several months ago, Jim and I decided it might be meaningful to time a summer series on those Psalms of Ascents to begin on Ascension Sunday (when we celebrate Jesus' return to the Father, 40 days after his resurrection). What we didn't realize at the time was that our cycle of Psalm readings in the Soul Room would also have us starting the Psalms of Ascents (120-134) this past Monday. I guess Flannery O'Connor was right: Everything That Rises Must Converge.O'Connor actually borrowed that line from the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who rightly encourages us to "move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit, you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge." There's some popular "wisdom" out there that might take this to mean that all lifestyles or religions lead to the same destination. That's not the testimony of Scripture, though. There's only one greater consciousness; only one True Love; only one Temple of the Living God. The road is narrow, and many are those who miss Him. Yet part of the mystery of our holy pilgrimage is that to His people, Jesus is both our final destination and our faithful travel companion. To follow Christ as a pilgrim-disciple is to have already arrived and yet continue to ascend, further up and further in, into a profound intimacy with the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I can get on board with that road trip, especially with a playlist this good.- Josh