There is a story Saul Bellow told about a Rabbi who lived in a small village in Russia.

Every Friday morning, the Rabbi disappeared for several hours. The people of his congregation had an explanation for this. They would tell anyone who asked that their Rabbi spent those hours going up to heaven to talk with God.

When a stranger moved into the village and heard this, he was skeptical. So one Friday morning, he hid near the Rabbi's house to see for himself.

He watched the Rabbi rise, say his prayers, and then — unlike any other morning — change into peasant clothes. He picked up an ax and walked into the woods. He cut firewood for several hours. Then he hauled the wood to a small shack on the outskirts of the village, where an elderly woman and her son lived. He left enough wood to last the week. And then he quietly walked home.

The stranger stayed. He joined the congregation. And from that day on, whenever he heard someone say, on Friday mornings our Rabbi ascends all the way to heaven — he would quietly add:

Yes. To heaven — if not higher.

Jesus said: Whatever you have done for the least of these… you have done it to me.

Jesus promises that his presence is bound up in the actual act of showing up for someone in need. In the wood hauled through the snow. In the meal left at the door. In the phone call made to the person nobody else is calling.

This week, I want to offer you an invitation. Do something generous for someone you know to be in need. And try — genuinely try — not to let them know it was you.

When you do, I trust you will find what the Rabbi found on those Friday mornings. Not just the satisfaction of a good deed. Something more. A presence. A joy that doesn't quite have an explanation.

A foretaste, maybe, of heaven. If not higher.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, come. Surround us with your peace. Lift from us whatever we are carrying today, and restore us to the joy of your salvation. And then send us out — to forgive as we have been forgiven, to love as we have been loved, to give as we have received. Amen.

Yesterday we reflected on pilgrimage — the ancient practice of setting out toward something God is calling you into, even when the destination isn't entirely clear.

Today I want to stay with that image. Because I think some of us may be wondering whether the season for that kind of journey has passed.

It hasn’t.

Over the course of a lifetime, there are many pilgrimages. Some we choose. Some choose us. Journeys of faith and doubt, of raising children and letting them go, of building something and watching it end, of leaving home and finding it somewhere unexpected. Some of these journeys are physical. Some are interior. Some are both at once.

And calling — we tend to think of that as a single thing. A vocation. A life's work. But I have come to believe that calling is less like a destination and more like a series of doors. And God keeps opening new ones, at every stage of life, for as long as we are willing to walk through them.

I think about a man I knew who retired from a military career in his early fifties. He went back to school and earned a degree in fine arts. He became a painter — and not a hobbyist. A real one. In his seventies he was commissioned to paint murals in his city. When I knew him, he was in his eighties, showing up faithfully to a Spanish-speaking Bible study every Sunday night — growing in his faith and fine-tuning a language he had only recently begun to learn.

You're never too old to grow, he would say.

The book of Hebrews tells us that by faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called. He was in his eighties. Sarah was not far behind. They left everything familiar — not because they had a clear plan, but because God was nudging them forward. They set out, Hebrews says, not knowing where they were going.

Just like the Celtic pilgrims we thought about yesterday. Just like most of us, if we're honest, at the beginning of any journey worth taking.

What Abraham and Sarah had was not a map. They had a willingness. And it turned out, that was enough.

I know some of you have already undertaken epic journeys — of immigration, of recovery, of loss and rebuilding. Journeys that cost you everything and gave you back something you couldn't have found any other way.

And I know some of you may be sitting quietly with a question you haven't said out loud yet:

Does God have something yet for me? Are there any journeys left?

Almost certainly yes!

The door may not look the way you expect. The calling may be quieter than the ones that came before. It may be inward rather than outward — a journey toward healing, or depth, or a peace you have not yet fully found. Or it may be something entirely new. A language you haven't learned. A gift you haven't fully given. A person who needs exactly what only you — with everything you have lived and lost and learned — can offer.

You are not too old. It is not too late. Remember: Abraham and Sarah…

Prayer: God of every season, we thank you that your calling on our lives does not expire. That you are always beckoning us forward — into more than we have yet imagined. Grant us dreams and longings that are in harmony with yours. Give us the courage to say yes to the next door, whatever it looks like. And may we trust, as Abraham trusted, that you will meet us on the road. In Jesus' name. Amen.

‍

A few years ago I read a book by that title — The Way Is Made by Walking — written by a man who walked the entire El Camino de Santiago. An ancient pilgrimage route across northern Spain, ending at the cathedral of Saint James. Hundreds of miles on foot. Days bleeding into weeks. The destination known, but the journey anything but.

It stayed with me.

And then I came across a different kind of pilgrimage altogether. The ancient Celtic practice of peregrination — a journey taken without knowing the final destination. You simply… set out.

The writer John Philip Newell describes it this way. It often involved setting sail from one's homeland — from what was known and comfortable toward what was unknown and challenging. It was sometimes called seeking the place of one's resurrection. Leaving the familiar in order to experience new birth. Dying to the boundaries and security of home in order to be alive to what you had never imagined before.

No map. No guaranteed outcome. Just the willingness to go.

A pilgrimage doesn't always involve a physical journey, of course. It has also long been a metaphor for something that happens on the inside — a movement of the soul toward something God is calling us into.

And I want to ask you a question today that I find myself sitting with regularly:

Is there a pilgrimage God might be calling you toward?

Maybe it is a movement deeper into your own faith — a willingness to ask harder questions, to sit with more uncertainty, to go further in than you have allowed yourself to go before.

Maybe it is a journey toward healing — toward something that has hardened or been wounded in you over the years, something that has needed tending for a long time.

Maybe it is a calling outward — to engage the world in some new way. To serve, to give, to create, to respond to a need that will not stop pulling at you.

Sometimes that calling announces itself quietly. A story you hear that opens something up. An image that won't leave you alone. A moment when you think: somebody should do something about this. Or — I have to find a way to make sense of this. To redeem it.

Those moments are worth paying attention to. They are often the beginning of something.

The Celtic pilgrims set out without knowing exactly where they were going. What they trusted was not the destination — but the One who was leading them there.

My prayer for you is simply this: may you be open. Open to the calling. Open to the journey. Open to wherever the way leads next.

Prayer: O God, you are always beckoning us forward — deeper, further, into more than we have yet imagined. Give us the courage to set out. To leave behind what is comfortable when you are calling us toward something new. May our dreams and longings be ever in tune with yours. And may we trust, even when we cannot see the destination, that you know the way. In Jesus' name. Amen.

‍

The philosopher Ryan Holiday writes about moments of awe:

The soft paw prints of a cat on the dusty trunk of a car. The hot steam pouring from street vents on a city morning. The smell of asphalt just as the rain begins to fall. A basket full of vegetables from the garden. A floor filled with a child's toys, arranged in the chaos of exhausted enjoyment.

He goes on: Don't let the beauty of life escape you. See the world as the temple that it is. Let every experience be church-like. Marvel at the fact that any of this exists — that you exist.

Can you see it? Do you get the idea?

I think about moments like these in my own life.

Sitting out on the water early in the morning before anyone else is awake, watching the light change on the surface. The sound of rain on the roof in the middle of the night. A conversation with a stranger that goes somewhere neither of us expected. The particular quality of late afternoon light through the sanctuary windows. The face of someone who has just received good news they were afraid to hope for.

These moments are not rare. They are everywhere. The question is whether we are paying attention.

Thomas Aquinas called this the study of wonder. The practice of noticing. And he believed it was not peripheral to the life of faith — it was central to it. In noticing, we become alive. In wonder, we find ourselves drawn, almost involuntarily, toward gratitude. And gratitude, it turns out, is one of the shortest distances between a human being and God.

Modern psychology and neuroscience have caught up with what Aquinas knew. Research consistently shows that moments of awe — genuine wonder at something larger than ourselves — produce measurable increases in well-being, perspective, and peace. They quiet the noise. They loosen anxiety's grip. They remind us, at a level deeper than thought, that we are part of something vast and good.

We live in a time when there is no shortage of things competing for our attention — most of them urgent, many of them troubling. The news pulls at us. The demands pile up. It is easy to move through entire days without once lifting our eyes.

But the beauty has not gone anywhere. It is still there, waiting.

The weed breaking through the crack in the sidewalk. The elderly couple walking hand in hand. The child's laughter from the next yard over. The sky at the end of a hard day, doing something extraordinary that no one asked it to do.

Marvel at the fact that any of this exists, Holiday writes. That you exist.

Today, I want to invite you to make your own list. Not as an exercise — but as a practice of attention. What have you walked past lately without really seeing? What has been there all along, waiting to be noticed?

Open your eyes. And as you do, let your heart follow.

Because this, too, is prayer.

Prayer: Gracious God, you have filled this world with more beauty than we have eyes to take in. Forgive us for the days we move through it without noticing. Open our eyes today — to the small and the ordinary, to the surprising and the sacred. And may what we see draw us closer to you, the source of all that is beautiful and good. In Christ's name. Amen.

‍

Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain to get away from the crowds. And then something happens that none of them were prepared for.

Matthew tells us Jesus was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun. His clothes turned white as light. Moses and Elijah appeared beside him. And a voice came from a cloud:

This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.

The disciples fell on their faces.

I wonder if you have ever had a moment like that. Not a vision, necessarily. Not a voice from a cloud. But a moment when something shifted — when you became suddenly, unmistakably aware that there is far more to this life than what you can see or touch or explain. A moment of clarity. Of humility. Of presence.

Maybe it was in worship, when a piece of music reached somewhere words couldn't. Maybe it was in nature — standing at the edge of the ocean, or looking up at a sky full of stars. Maybe it was at a bedside, or in a moment of prayer, or in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday when something broke open unexpectedly.

Those moments are gifts. And they are real.

What's interesting is what Peter does in the middle of this one.

Lord, it is good for us to be here. And then, almost immediately: Let us make three dwellings — one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.

In other words — let's stay. Let's set up camp. It's good up here.

I understand that impulse completely. When we find ourselves in a moment of genuine transcendence, the last thing we want to do is leave. We want to hold onto it. Build something around it. Keep it just like this.

But they couldn't stay. And neither can we.

Because the work is not on the mountain top. It never has been.

The work is in the valley — where people are hurting and struggling and afraid. In the schools and the neighborhoods and the homes. Among the poor, the sick, the lonely. In the ordinary, unglamorous, sometimes heartbreaking places where faith is not a feeling but a practice. Where what we believe actually comes to bear.

The mountain top doesn't exist to give us an escape from the valley. It exists to give us what we need to go back down.

That's the movement of the Christian life. We go up, to be renewed and humbled and filled. And then we come back down, carrying something we didn't have before. Something that sustains us in the hard work of loving the world the way God loves it.

So perhaps this is our prayer:

Take us up the mountain, Lord. Show us your glory. Humble us, convict us, fill us. Give us a vision of what is true and what is possible. And then — bring us back down. And let what we saw up there change how we live down here.

Prayer: O God, grant us moments of transcendence — when the veil is thin and we sense your presence close. Draw us up the mountain. And then send us back into the valley, carrying your grace. May what we encounter in those holy moments shape how we love, how we serve, and how we live. In Jesus' name. Amen.

‍