Essentials for the Journey
Week 1 of Lent – Compass: Finding Direction 

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” 

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

—John 14:1-7 

Written by Pastor Rushan, Senior Minister

I’ve always felt that it would be so nice to have a map of my life. It would be nice to know what’s going to happen every minute of every day so that there would be no surprises. It would be nice to know that there’s a challenge looming next week or that in a few months things are going to be relatively easy for a few days. Unfortunately, we don’t have such “life maps”, and have virtually no idea what’s just around the corner until it jumps out in front of us and throws us off balance.

When we wrestle with and wonder where we are going in life and how to get there, Jesus’ response to Thomas in the passage above is also addressed to us, “Actually, you do know where you are going, and you also know the way.” The problem for us is that, quite often we are looking in the wrong places. Jesus tells the disciples and us, that the destination is always to God and one way to get there is through Jesus.

We may not have a map for our life, but we do have a compass: just as on a compass the needle pulls to true north, in our lives, Jesus the way pulls to our true north – God – and invites us to join him on the journey.

If God is our destination, our lives are being constantly drawn in his direction. If something else is our destination (money, status, power, recognition etc.) then our lives are drawn in that direction. The first spiritual essential for real life is having a sense of direction based on a relationship with God.