When I was a child my parents used to visit ruined castles and abbeys in the North of England. On one such trip we visited the ruins of Lindesfarne on Holy Island. For some reason this visit left a deep impression on my mind. Years later, in 1980, while driving back from Edinburgh in Scotland to England, I saw a road sign to "Holy Island." Remembering my childhood visit I decided to make a detour and visit Lindesfarne, although at that time I really didn't know why I was going there.

The impact of the area and its ruins profoundly affected me. In reality there was very little to see. Yet somehow, in a quite inexplicable way, I felt a strange peace and sense of holiness. Although at the time I knew very little about Lindesfarne, and certainly did not know anything about its rich history as a center of Christian piety and evangelism, I sensed that this was a special place unlike many other historic sites I had visited over the years. Here one sensed God was at work even today.

Almost fourteen years later I had a similar experience when visiting the monastery of Iona off the West coast of Scotland. The mother house for Lindesfarne, which once more is a living Christian community, Iona has its own sense of history, peace, and holiness which is almost impossible to describe in words. Since then visits to Fulda, the birthplace of Germany Christianity, Wittenberg, the birthplace of the Reformation, and Eisleben the birthplace of the great reformer Martin Luther [1483-1546], have convinced me that when the Bible talks about the importance of memorials [Joshua 4], remembrance [1 Corinthians 11], and makes reference to specific places [Matthew 2 and Acts 20-22], it is because through history and geography Christians learn to appreciate the work of God in the lives of numerous individuals over time in ways that go beyond mere intellectual knowledge and information about the past.

Therefore, I have come to believe that travel and pilgrimage play an important role in the Christian life by deepening our understanding through the use of all our sense to make us aware that God acts in space and time and that we are not alone in our Christian journey. Rather we tread a path that others have trod and from their example we can draw encouragement and insight into the trials and tribulations of our own time. Christian history is a living history because our God is a living God.