A Pilgrim's Brief Regress

Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of [them], and embraced [them], and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.

The older I get, the more that I recognize the meaning of the term pilgrim. Top side of the earth, living in the twenty-first century, the information age has thrown our society into a high-speed tail spin with information-overload at every turn and an exhausting schedule filling ones plate with a hundred equally-valid but sometimes hollow and vane choices. We need to reflect here.

Recently, I have had the occasion of attempting to research my father’s genealogical record. I have avoided committing the financial resources to the on-line services and have opted for my own searches. This has proved that it requires patience; but such has proven fruitful, and I must admit has resulted in a new-slate of web friends all distant cousins with the same aim, those of whom I never have had the pleasure of growing up with. If you choose to embark on such a task, don’t be surprised of the myths that are perpetuated in your family based on second and third hand knowledge of events. Life and in particular, people are never what they seem to be. This activity has given me pause to go back to those times in the late 1800’s and early twentieth century when my “grands” walked the earth. Wonder what it would have been like then; did they look to the now? Did they fathom the future?

When we measure our life, pedigree, education and human industry carry no real significance do they? No amount of sweat and blood towards human capacity carry no real thrust in the eternal, except only a few brief moments before they are rendered, wood, hay and stubble. Oh, we should work at our task at hand, “as unto the Lord”, but I am talking about our motivation in the immediate. I love this passage in Hebrews. I believe Bunyan magically captured this idea in his allegory. Consider where the writer’s context renders this passage, it was the faithful through the ages that could only see the “country from afar”. Oh that God would only keep our glimpse towards the afar! Oh that we would embrace the cross for His Service! Oh that we throw off the shackles of the now and taste a glimpse of Heaven and the Eternal! Oh, that we would work out our own salvation! Now that preaches!