Another Camino, Another Spiritual Journey

These past two weeks, I have been on a two week, 140-mile hiking journey through Northern Spain on the Way of St. James.  I had done the same journey last time for a week and only 75 miles.  To refresh everyone's memory, this journey was a journey taken in Ancient times to the place were James is buried, which is Santiago de Compostela.  It technically starts in Saint Jean Pie de Port, France and goes all the way to the Northwest corner of Spain, a journey that typically takes a little over a month to do.  However, I only did two weeks of it because I simply just don't have a month to spend to be able to do that.

This time around on the journey, I learned so many different things.  As I began to experience life on this inward and outward journey, I began to experience something this time around that I had failed to experience all my life.  I began to notice the explosion of colors all around the Galician countryside.  The combinations of brown, green, yellow and purple that make Galicia beautiful.  I began to notice the early morning fog, the light rain, the moments of sunshine pushing its way through the clouds.  I began to experience God in a new way and it was throught the world he created.  As I walked this long journey, my mind was at peace with the world around me and God brought this small understanding of Him through his creation.

I also was able to experience the journey with fellow sojourners along the way.  People from Spain, France, Germany and even the United States.  We all had a common bond in aching muscles, strained ligaments and feet filled with blisters.  We all were on some sort of journey, both inward and outward.  We were all opened to sharing our spiritual experiences with one another.  God was truly at work in the lives of those around me to speak to me and I can only hope God used me to do the same to those around me.

Lastly, I came to grips in a small way with my own humanity on this journey.  I began to realize that even though God has done so much in me these past 11 months, but my life journey with the Lord is still not over.  I still have limitations, vices and gifts in my personality that can be obstacles at times.  However, I shouldn't focus on these things, but rather focus on loving God and what it means when God says he loves us.  I believe that comprehending how much God loves me will lead me to a greater love for him and a greater desire to do the things He has me to do.

The longer I'm here, the more I realized how I am just okay and how good and big God is.  That's something that we tend to say all the time.  "God is good all the time and all the time God is good" or we sang the song as kids "My God is so BIG, so strong and so mighty there's nothing my God cannot do."  I have wondered in my own life this very question that I am about to present to you all.  If God really is so BIG and so GOOD, then why do we let the fears we have in our lives control us?  I would like to think that if I thought God was so big that the world we live in couldn't contain him, why don't I live a life of faith sometimes that shows He's that big or that He is that good?  Why don't we, the church do that?

I'll admit for me that I've so often confused comfort as peace when that's not necessarily the case.i I believe that in America, I grew up with the illusion that comfortable was what really mattered.  I had to have comfortable clothes, comfortable shoes, a comfortable bed, and a house with Air Conditioning.  Now I may not have it as bad as people in other places, but I don't have air-conditioning, I wear the tightest jeans I've ever worn in my life, I have a fauxhawk haircut, and I live in a strange land that speaks a strange language and has a strange culture (thanks Thom Wolf).  As close as Europe is to America in some ways, I'm still not 100% comfortable with things here.  However, a good friend taught me that being uncomfortable isn't always a bad thing.  Maybe we all in the American church should remember that...Maybe we've become so comfortable and fearful that we forgot to love God and that "perfect love drives out all fear."