The Sacred Journey

I truly wanted to dive deep into "The Sacred Journey," by Charles Foster, I just never got beneath the surface. The Ancient Practices Series have been difficult to review. They are necessary to understand in the Christian faith, it's just that they are difficult to discuss and even more challenging to present in a way that grabs the attention of readers in today's world. "The Sacred Journey" focuses on actual physical pilgrimages in history. I was disappointed because there is a deeper meaning in the "journey" that God takes us on. The message in the book just doesn't take you down that path in a way that gives you insight into your own personal faith walk.

I was ecstatic to find that the author emphasized that the essence of the Christian faith is found in one simple command from Jesus, "Follow Me." This is where it all begins. The journey in "taking a walk with Jesus," never ends and it leads to a deeper more meaningful life than most of us can fathom. The author even discusses other religious view points in the pilgrimage discussion. At times, the message seemed to get off topic, yet I found bits and pieces of great insight to feed on. The message seems to emphasize that walking with Christ is all about the journey that transforms us into His likeness, but then states that it's all about the "encounter." It's not about the destination, but the journey. That is the overall point in this book.

I just wish the message had gone deeper . . . speaking about why it is that God takes us on this journey-the spiritual side of it. Primarily, I wanted to dig deeper as to what exactly God is doing through the journey. This was "touched" on in the book, but it could have gone SO much deeper and I believe would have helped the reader to connect in a greater personal way. At times, the focus of the "physical" journey seemed to be too overemphasized and I was glad to see that the author addressed the woman with MS who cannot take that "physical" journey. If we focus too much on the physical journey, we leave the majority of people out. There is a journey that takes place in the soul; it can take place in the paraplegic. We don't necessarily need a trip to the Holy Land to take a journey with Christ that fills us with the fullness of God's glory. It's about saying "Yes" to Jesus when He says "Come, follow Me." That may mean following Him a mile down the road to the homeless who need your daily presence so that they might know His.

*I received this book for free through the Thomas Nelson BookSneeze Program in exchange for my unbiased review.