THE TRUE PILGRIM

THE TRUE PILGRIM
Heb 11:7-19
"By faith, Abraham…obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going." (v.8).

ABRAHAM BEARS ALL THE MARKS OF A true pilgrim. Though he is best known for his sacrifice of his son Isaac (v.17), his faith in God was nurtured over many years of his geographical and spiritual pilgrimage.

His journey began when he left his home in that great and prosperous city, Ur of the Chaldeans (Genesis 11.27). Unlike his father Terah who went no farther than Haran, Abraham journeyed on. His pilgrimage is sustained on two levels. Outwardly, he lived like a pilgrim, in tents "like a stranger in a foreign country" (v.9, see also v.13). Tents are temporary structures, erected to be taken down when the time comes to leave. Thus Abraham avoided the fatal mistake of his father who planted his roots too deeply to move on.

Inwardly, he thought like a pilgrim. He was always looking forward, to the city of God (v.10), to a better country, a heavenly one (16). He did not allow either his thinking or his lifestyle to stagnate. When our church, meeting for years in a rented shophouse, moved into a land of our own, the speaker at the Ground-Claiming Ceremony, Dr Bobby Sng, warned us, "The danger you face is that of losing the dynamism of being a pilgrim people. …Once you begin to possess a place, there is a tendency of turning a forward look into an inward look. And when that happens, the church ceases to grow."

This can happen to us too. Settling into a career, a marriage, a family, or a home is no doubt a blessing. But it is a blessing fraught with hidden dangers for the unwary. We become so comfortable where we are that we lose sight of where we are going. Someone once quipped that Singaporeans live in such luxurious apartments that they may not really like their mansions in heaven. The comforts of an affluent society can rob us of the pilgrim spirit.

Ultimately, as the song reminds us, "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through…." For Abraham and his fellow-pilgrims, they "did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance." (v.13). This is faith, for they looked beyond what is immediate and seen to what lies over the horizon. Where are we setting our eyes?

Has my forward look become an inward look?