Pilgrimage

Pilgrimage: My Journey to a Deeper Faith in the Land Where Jesus Walked by Lynn Austin

 

Lynn Austin

 The word means to take a journey for a purpose. This journey is about the end destination, but even more about the sojourning. About the traveling.  

A pilgrimage is embraced and experienced. It pivots on the place you have chosen to go. How you chose to get there. Who you will travel with. What will you take with you? What will you leave behind? Sounds like a vacation. Perhaps, but it is far more.

Pilgrimages begin first in the interior, and the journey is the outward manifestation.

Recently I read a cathartic book that stirred my heart to hunger for a pilgrimage. Lynn Austin’s newest book is called simply:

Pilgrimage.

Lynn journeys to the Holy Land. She walked where Jesus walked. She went worn, frazzled and depleted. But oh, what God can do when we put ourselves in his hands, when we give our pilgrimages over to him and allow him to plan the itinerary. This book is the fruit of a many day journey through barren desert, tangled wilderness, lush oasis and sacred places. Lynn captures each one in a fresh way. She tells her story gently. Easily. In several chapters I thought I was actually reading her journal.  

Lynn’s account of traveling through Hezekiah’s Tunnel riveted me. Not just because of the physicality of the underground trek, but because something terrifyingly beautiful was birthed in Lynn in that tunnel. I squeezed through the tunnel with her, water up to my thighs, dark hovering before my face and following someone I don’t quite know.

And isn’t that what all good and significant books do? They draw you into the middle of the experience. They pull you into the story and you find yourself present.

Lynn Austin’s Pilgrimage set me down in the middle of the Holy Land.