TO BE A PILGRIM – April 20

    ‘He who would valiant be, ’gainst all disaster,

    Let him in constancy follow the Master.’

Many of us learned this well-loved hymn in our school days, associating it with John Bunyan’s epic  tale of Pilgrim’s Progress.

I don’t remember when I first read this wonderful story, recently dramatized on television. It was written in all the squalor of Bedford Jail where he was imprisoned for many years for preaching the Gospel.

Nor do I remember how old I was when we were taken to the West End to see a dramatized version. I have never forgotten the part when the pilgrims were assaulted in Vanity Fair, not for anything they had done, but for refusing to associate with their decadent life style. When Faithful was put to death, all we saw was the glow of the fire and a beautiful solo voice singing, ‘My heart ever faithful.’

But my strongest memory of the play was of Pilgrim and his friend leaving the path to take a short cut, as they thought, through by-pass meadow. Here they were captured by Giant Despair and shut up in Doubting Castle. It is strongest because it is one I have needed to be reminded of through the long years.

The pilgrims were convinced that was no escape until Hopeful suddenly realises he has a key in his pocket; it is the key of FAITH. Together they begin to proclaim the wonderful promises of God.

‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ and again -

‘What can separate us from the love of God?’

That dark, gloomy dungeon becomes full of light; the prison doors swung open wide. They are free and their feet once more on the King’s high way.

I have had need to remember this story in times of difficulty and darkness, and never more so than now that we are shut up, imprisoned in a sense by the threat of Coronavirus and social distancing, but now, thank God, we are prisoners of Hope, not of Despair..

I remember a young man telling us how he suffered from depression, until God told him that it was his choice. Thank God, like our Pilgrims, he took out the key of faith and chose the path of deliverance.

So now, are we prisoners of despair or prisoners of hope? Are we shut up to depression, or shut up in the purposes of God to discover the new ways God is opening for us to still shine his light and spread his Gospel?

    ‘There’s no discouragement, to make us once relent,

    Our first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.’