Beginning a new year, I am reminded of how powerful the theme of journey can be in the life of faith. Churches can be places where people can explore the understanding of their faith in an atmosphere of trust and safety. Faith is a shared journey on which people ask hard questions in love, share their differing understandings, and seek to integrate actions with beliefs.

Being on journey means being honest in the searching, in the questioning, and in application of faith to life. When this happens, the result is an integration of one's whole-life beliefs. Theological exploration, for example, when done with integrity, must be life exploration. Too often theological conflict is really just a mask for life conflict. Faith is both relationship and belief, but it is more relationship than belief. Faith is both trust and insight, but it is more trust than insight. Faith is both letting go of the familiar and taking on new understandings and directions, but it is more letting go than taking on. Paul was the apostle who never met Jesus in the flesh, yet he has influenced the faith of those who follow Jesus more any person other than Jesus. Paul used the image of "being crucified with Christ." He meant that he had experienced a kind of death within himself. It was a letting go of the goals and values that were dominant in his life before he knew Jesus. The biblical theme plays out in Paul's life. He died to the person he had been and was born anew into the faithful follower of Jesus we know from the New Testament.

The journey has meaning for us when it is integrated around faithful living. This means congregations shaping their individual and shared ministries around the bedrock themes of justice, peacemaking, and inclusive love. Journey theology has integrity when it reflects the biblical themes of death, new birth, transformation of life, and growth in the Spirit. Our life journeys are most honest when we approach them somewhat as the little child in this story:

There was a little girl, maybe three or four years old, who was an only child. One day she found out that her mother was pregnant and was very excited about having a new brother or sister. Within a few hours of the parents bring the new baby home from the hospital, the girl made a request. She wanted to be alone with her new brother in his room with the door shut. Her insistence on this made her parents a bit uneasy, but then they remembered that they had installed an intercom system in the nursery. They realized that if anything strange or dangerous was happening, they could be in the baby's room in an instant. So they let the little girl go into the baby's room, shut the door, and raced to the intercom listening station. They heard their daughter's footsteps moving across the baby's room, imagined her standing over the baby's crib, and then heard her say to her three-day-old brother, "Quick, tell me about God. I've almost forgotten."

Let us ask the Spirit to tell us again and again about God – to help us remember when we've almost forgotten.

Thanks for blessing me on the journey.

--Jack Price

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