How can we know the way?

It’s always important to know where you are going…if possible! But Thomas, the friend of Jesus, poses my question: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” (Jn.14:5). I am one who is on the journey, but often I am confused or just in the dark about a way forward. Jesus refers his closest friends back to their journey with him already: “I am the way,” he says. It became a cliché several years back to ask one’s self “What would Jesus do?” But, in many ways we know how to go forward because we have already learned what is important. Jesus taught love, forgiveness, inclusiveness, kindness and compassion. None of those steps or actions can be the wrong steps, no matter where we find ourselves.

And he also promised that his close friends would experience the Spirit living within them, reminding them of the ways of love. Think of the Holy Spirit as a spiritual GPS in our travels, giving us course correction, reminding us to back up and turn around, telling when we have taken a wrong route. I have experienced that GPS within me, making itself known in sacred reading, in quiet prayer, in conversation with others. It is a source of creative energy, a fountain which produces ideas that seem to come from nowhere, about how to love, when to be quiet, and ways to think outside the box about knotty problems. Signs abound in my life with the Spirit lens with which to view them, and they lead me onward. 

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation