Dear Friends,
When Columba set sail in 563 AD (nearly 1,500 years ago), he was fleeing; putting distance between himself and religious lead-ers in Ireland who wanted him punished. His crime: obtaining a valuable copy of the Vulgate (the Latin translation of the New Testament) without their permission and then copying it. Colum-ba’s exile backfired. He landed in the first land where Ireland could not be seen, the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides, off Scot-land’s west coast.
Why do I say it backfired? From this windswept isle, Columba brought Celtic Christianity that spread through much of Scotland. By the time of his death, his mission on Iona was thriving, the monastery had a scriptorium that produced the most beautifully illustrated manuscript of the gospels, the Book of Kells.
What is a PILGRIMAGE? A religious journey. To this day, Iona remains a place of pilgrimage. Scott and I traveled to Iona in May. To be there was to stand on holy ground.
On our travels through England and Scotland, we circled the ancient stones of Stonehenge, intertwined with an ancient reli-gion about which we know little.
We walked the streets of London where John Wesley lived and brought life to the church now called Methodist. We visited churches where he attended or preached: St Giles-without-Cripplegate, St. Botolph’s-without Aldersgate, where a hospital for the poor sprang up in the Middle Ages and remains. St. Bar-tholomew the Great Parish, the oldest parish church still active in London and the last church where Wesley preached. We walked along the fields where he preached outdoors when he was no longer welcome in the pulpit of Church of England parishes. And stood under the plaque on Al-dersgate Street where John Welsey’s heart was “strangely warmed” on May 24, 1738.
We toured Westminster Abbey and saw the “Stone of Destiny,” a sacred symbol of the monarchy used for crowning kings of Scot-land and England since King Edward 1 in 1296. The stone looks ordinary. Its power lies as symbolically linking the monarch to destiny before God. Not something Americans can wholly appre-ciate, although, it reminds me of our Presidents being inaugurat-ed with hand upon a Bible as a symbol of God’s presence in our land.
PILGRIMAGE. We trod on the paths of venerable saints of Christi-anity, and came home renewed, more assured of God’s presence in our lives. God the ever-present Lord, journeying with us wher-ever we go. Can you be on watch for God’s work in your lives?
In Christ,
Pastor Donna Goltry