Life Is a Pilgrimage

In the final analysis, the call of God to whatever he wills for any of us is a call that leads one out into uncharted territory. It is a call to move and keep moving at God’s command, going out like Abraham to a land we know not where, honing our gifts by faith and using our resources to follow after and trust the One who alone knows and is the way.

A lovely story from my own faith tradition well illustrates the point. Dr. Karl Olsson--gifted among us as a college and seminary professor, denominational historian, one-time president of North Park College and Theological Seminary, who later also served as a leader in Faith at Work--was in his younger days in somewhat of a quandary about what he should do with his life.
In a long, six-page handwritten letter to David Nyvall, the founder and first president of North Park, whose spirit and work were and remain central to our self-understanding in the Evangelical Covenant Church, he sought his professor’s wisdom. “Some say I should become a lawyer,” he wrote, “others a preacher or teacher or scholar, and still others a public servant.” On and on he went, listing any number of things at which. given his talent. he could have excelled.

In response, his elder and esteemed professor, replied with a penny post card, personally addressed to K. Olsson on the one side, with a single suggestion on the other: “Proceed!” It was not that the wise old professor was without strong opinions. It was rather that he trusted God, the Covenant community of faith, and life process to reveal God’s will.

“Abraham traveled on by stages,” we read in Genesis 12. So did Karl Olsson, and so have I, and so must you, dear reader. None of us is ever alone, given God’s call. But each of us is on a life-long pilgrimage that leads to the only city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God himself.

Move, then, into both today and tomorrow confident—not cocky, as if knowing more than you do know, but sure nonetheless that the one who has created and called you has a purpose for your life that will become clear to you, if only by stages.