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| Billie Silvey |
| Mapping Our Spiritual Journey |
| June 2007 |
| In 1675, a man named John Bunyan was in prison for holding religious services outside the Church of England. Bunyan had little education and a humble background, but the allegorical novel he wrote there is considered a classic of literature and has been translated into more than 100 languages. It's called The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come, and it tells the story of Christian and his life and spiritual journey. The map above is an illustration of that journey from a 1778 edition of the book. Bunyan wasn't the first to use the theme of a journey to teach spiritual lessons. The Old Testament includes the journeys of Abraham, Jacob and Moses and the Israelites from their escape from bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land. The New Testament recounts three preaching trips of Paul as well as his final journey to Rome. Each can and has been mapped, and I've used those maps many times in teaching both children and adults. Mapping is a way to consider our own spiritual journeys. We can start from our birth or our new birth and move forward through our lives, noting significant events or influences. Spiritual development is an abstract concept, and many people benefit from finding some way to represent it visually. |
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| A bargraph can be used to plot one particular aspect of our spiritual lives. Are we praying more or less than we used to? Or we can use it to compare where we were spiritually as a child, in our 20s, our 30s, etc. |
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| We can draw a thermometer to indicate changes in our spiritual "temperature" over time. The writer of Revelation speaks of being hot, cold or lukewarm. |
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| We can chart our spiritual ups and downs on a simple line graph. |
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| Or, we can start where we are now and look back to where we've come from and forward to where we want to go. Highways and how they connect can indicate the way we start going one way, then change and go off in another, zigzag and turn. |
| What does your spiritual journey look like? Paul in 2 Corinthians 13:5 challenges us to "examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves," and to "grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ" (Ephesians 4:15). Peter says to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). Are you growing? Can an exercise of spritual mapping help you test yourself to see? |
| We can use a timeline (click on the word to fill out your own) to map the key events of our lives and how we've reacted to them. It can show us how we've grown and changed over time. |