A couple of years ago I went on a five-five day hiking trip in Algonquin Park, Ontario, Canada. There were about ten of us and we had only ourselves, our gear, and our own personal determination. Most people in the group had never been on such a trip before, and eight hours of hiking with backpacks is very strenuous work. At the start, we were hiking together but did not make full use of that fact. Many of us relied on our own determination during the hard parts of the hike. This became especially hard near the end of the day when we knew we had almost reached our goal, but were physically exhausted. This was when we had to rely on the encouragement of others to keep on going, even though it would have been much easier to sit down, set up camp and call it a day. We needed support from each other to finish our journey. Once we reached our campsite, we could truly appreciate the beauty of our surroundings and enjoy the sense of accomplishment from hiking so far. The rewards made it well worth the effort of the journey.

Our journey through life is much like this. Many people try to go through life by themselves. They try relying on their own self-determination and strength. This may work at first but sometimes things get really tough. In order to keep going, reliance on God and on our fellow Christians becomes very important. The encouragement we give and receive helps us all one day get to the finish. That's why the Church is such an important gift from God to us.

Prayer: Dear Lord, sometimes life gets difficult but we need to realize we are not alone. There are people around us who can offer us the help we need to get through the difficult situations in life. Please give us the strength to continue. Please help us look for and accept the help that is offered to us. We also pray that if we see someone who is in need, that we will be given the wisdom to be able to help them, so that we can all finish the journey of life together. Amen.

Discipleship, to some degree, has become a buzzword within the church. Everyone seems to talk about it, but it rarely gets fully explained. If you were to ask what a disciple of Christ is, most people would agree that a disciple is someone who follows Christ. Disciples are people who try to be like Christ in their everyday actions. What exactly does that mean? For example, are we not supposed to associate with our non-Christian friends any longer? I don't think that's what discipleship is about. Jesus dined with many "sinners" of his time, including tax collectors. 2 Peter 1:3-8 talks about many different qualities that Christians should have, such as goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness and love. I'd like to highlight two of these. The first is love. Our relationship with God and Christ is based on love. People really need to be loved and we really need to love others. This is noticeable in today's world where we are discovering that people who act negatively to the rest of the world really haven't been loved as they needed to be. The other quality is knowledge. God doesn't expect us to do things without thinking. If you read even a small part of Proverbs, it talks about the value of knowledge. Knowledge is the key in our world and it is a large part of understanding how to find our place as Christians in the world.

Prayer: Lord, discipleship is a large topic and this article has touched just briefly on it. It is one that is talked about a lot but not often explained enough. It is a topic that needs much self-exploration. Please help us to pray, read and ask questions, that we may be able to think and rethink this subject. Amen.