From the Pastor’s Desk: A Pilgrim People
One of the most memorable events in American history was the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in present-day Massachusetts in 1620. What school child hasn’t been thrilled by the story of these hardy pioneers, enduring a storm-tossed journey across the Atlantic, formulating the Mayflower Compact, barely surviving that first year in the wilderness, being befriended by an American Indian, and hosting a thanksgiving feast with their Native American neighbors?
Of course, what particularly characterized the Pilgrims is a fervent faith in and deep commitment to Almighty God. One of the original Pilgrims, in arguing for the lawfulness of leaving England for America, wrote that “we are all, all places, strangers and pilgrims, travellers and sojourners, most properly, having no dwelling but in this earthen tabernacle; our dwelling is but a wandering, and our abiding but as a fleeting, and in a word our home is nowhere but in the heavens, in that house not made with hands, whose maker and builder is God, and to which all ascend that love the coming of our Lord Jesus.”
The term “pilgrim” may also evoke scenes from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a masterpiece penned by a seventeenth century English lay preacher while he was imprisoned for daring to proclaim the gospel without a government license. This book, with its compelling portrait of Pilgrim as he journeys to the Celestial City, avoiding the temptations of Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond, remains one of the world’s best sellers.
All genuine believers in Jesus Christ are on a pilgrimage: they acknowledge that this world is not their home, but (in the words of an old gospel song) they’re just a-passin’ through. That’s why St. Peter wrote: “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation” (I Peter 2:11-12).
I got to thinking about the pilgrim nature of us as the people of God because of the fact that our congregation, on June 14th, will be “on the move.” On that particular Lord’s Day, we will not be able to meet at our regular location (Hampton Inn and Suites at Exit 11 off of Route 400) because of a scheduling conflict. We have instead secured the Kiwanis Club in Cumming—located, perhaps appropriately enough, at 417 Pilgrim Mill Road—for worship on that date. (Besides a change of venue, the time of the worship service will also change, from the regular 10 AM to 10:30 AM.) We will also be sharing a fellowship meal with one another, to which you are also invited.
But I trust that we can use this occasion to reflect on the temporal nature of our lives, and the fact that, along with Abraham and Sarah and other believers in the true and living God, we must confess that we are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” who “desire a better, that is, a heavenly country” (Hebrews 11:13-16).