Often when we consider our spiritual journey it is as something personal or individual, it is something that is uniquely ours.  At some level this is true, we are working out our faith in fear and trembling, we wrestle with God, we walk with him or we run away on a daily basis, and it is about our own personal relationship with God.  So in one way our journey’s are unique to us.  But in many ways the journey is also a common one.

     God has placed us in and among others in the world, he puts us in community with others to love, challenge us, encourage us, and to cause us to grow.  Within our communities of faith, we as people struggle with many of the same things.  We have similar hurts, trials, and battles.  We all face that internal conflict within ourselves, with the Spirit of God as we learn to yield and grow in relationship with him.  As children of God, we are all traveling by the same narrow way or path.  We may be at different points on the way, but its obviously a very well worn path.

     Not only do we now travel as individuals in community with others, but we are following the way of many before us.  The path has been worn or made straight by all the saints that have gone on ahead of us.  By faith, by the Word of God, and by the example of others the path is set out before us. Even though we may at times have complete darkness, by faith we can feel our way home as the way is so deeply worn by all who have and are following it.

     The writer of Hebrews in chapter eleven speaks of those who are examples of faith, and in chapter twelve speaks of those as witnesses to our journey.  He writes,

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin  that clings so closely, and let us run the race with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.  (Hebrews 12:1, NRSV)