Path of Promise

Friday in the Third Week of Lent

For he shall give his angels charge over you,
To keep you in all your ways.
Psalm 91:11

As I pass a doorway, I glimpse movement in the room beyond. Even as I keep walking, my brain processes what my eyes have seen: a woman and a child walking a labyrinth.  I smile as I imagine their journey along the path—fast, slow, steadfast, deliberate, playful, together, apart, in tandem.

It is the second labyrinth I have encountered this day. The first was a picture my brother posted from the school where he is a chaplain. That one captured my attention because of its bright rainbow colored path. A path of promise. And although there were no children in the picture, I called to mind other times and places I have seen children running, skipping, meandering, sliding, and carefully placing one foot in front of another with serious intent along a labyrinth path.

In the evening, I chance upon a third. As I attend a meeting, I hear the footsteps of people ascending the stairs to a room above, where I remember a labyrinth painted on the floor. I imagine strangers walking the sacred path above us and somehow including us along the way.

All these walkers are unaware of me. Yet I feel we are companions on the same journey, that together we walk a larger sacred path, sometimes in tandem, sometimes apart, as our footsteps bring us close and then send us out again to the periphery. And all the while we are kept along God’s loving way, held in promise, while the angels are in charge.

Photo:  Celtic Labyrinth used at St. Martin’s Episcopal School, Winnetka, CA. Designed and created by artist Carol Greene of St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church, Simi Valley, CA.