Strength to Strength

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage.” (Psalm 84) 

Life often feels like a pilgrimage, doesn’t it? I was reading this morning at the end of Leviticus where Moses recorded all the different encampments of the people of Israel during their forty year wandering in the desert. It made me tired just thinking about it: Picking up camp, moving some 600,000 plus people, and then setting everything back up again over and over again for over forty years. A whole chapter in the Bible is dedicated to recording all the different places Israel camped. 

But then again, I relate. I haven’t spend more than one year in one place since I left home to go to college. It feels like I’ve moved from dorm to dorm, apartment to apartment, across countries, and in multiple different “camps” within those countries. I should make a list, too, like Moses, of all the different places God has taken me and the lessons I have learned in each place. Where he has provided manna. Where he has brought water from the rock. Where his pillar has guided me. Where I have made idols and he has broken them down. Where snakes have bitten me, and where I looked upon jesus and lived. Where battles have been fought and won. 

“Blessed are those who set their hearts on pilgrimage.” A pilgrimage isn’t just wandering or roaming around; it is intentionally advancing toward a destination. But it’s not just about the destination, a pilgrimage is about the journey there. Those who journey through life, advancing towards God, camping where he leads and learning about him in each place, are blessed. As they go from camp to camp, they go from strength to strength. 

One could look at life and all its different camps and seasons, and say that all we do is go from one hard phase to the next. One hard thing to the next. That life is marked by its different sufferings. But that’s not what I want to be said about me. I don’t want to go from one hard thing to the next hard thing. I want to “go from strength to strength.” I want to be like the Proverbs 31 woman, who is “clothed in strength and dignity, who laughs at the days to come.” I want each phase of life, each camp I dwell in, to make me stronger in my faith and in my friendship with Jesus. 

That way, when the cloud departs and it’s time to move on to the next camp, I have no fear or dread. For I’m only moving only to a deeper strength. 

Let us “pass from strength to strength, until each appears before God in Zion.”