The Sauntering Pilgrim

“When I found your words, I devoured them, and they became to me a joy and my heart’s delight” (Jer. 15:16a).

How do you find God’s words? How do you approach the Bible? Some read it like a legal document, full of rules for behavior and threats of punishment for misbehavior. When W.C. Fields, who was not known as a religious man, started reading the Bible as he was nearing his death, someone asked him why, and he said he was “looking for loopholes.”

American author and satirist Ambrose Bierce took a darker view. He saw the scriptures as a source of superstition, moral hypocrisy, and intellectual stagnation. On the other hand, German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote, “A single line in the Bible has consoled me more than all the books I ever read besides.”

Some people read the Bible only on the surface. They trivialize and misunderstand it until, in words borrowed from Langston Hughes, the scriptures “crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet.” Sometimes they’re seen as irrelevant to life today, until we want to sputter with Clara Peller’s irascible impatience, “Where’s the beef?” Where’s the relevance, the real-life substance?

Searching for real-life substance in the scriptures can seem like the age-old search for the fountain of youth. People have sought the source of eternal youth probably for as long as there have been people. More than 3,000 years ago, the Epic of Gilgamesh described a magical plant called The-Old-Man-Will-Be-Made-Young.

An elixir of youth appeared in the writings of the Greek historian Herodotus in the fifth century BCE and again in the writings of the early Crusades in the eleventh century. Ponce de León’s search for the fountain of youth took him to Florida in the early sixteenth century.

Now, according to a new study reported in The New York Times last month, scientists may be getting closer to the goal of that ancient quest. They’ve created an enzyme that might help turn back the clock and reverse part of the aging process (K.R. Callaway, “Can This New Enzyme Turn Back the Clock in the Human Body,” The New York Times, 24 July 2026). Scientists want to help us find our way back to our youth, but I’m not sure youth is really what we’re looking for.

I believe we’re looking for what the Roman emperor Hadrian (CE 73-138) was looking for. He had access to the smartest and most illustrious advisors and could summon anyone to his presence. Yet he traveled more than 500 miles from Rome to attend the lectures of the Stoic philosopher and former slave Epictetus. Hadrian was not looking for a way to return to his youth; he was looking for a way to live fully in his present life.

Poet William Alexander Percy wrote about what he and perhaps Hadrian were looking for.

“I have a need of silence and of stars;
Too much is said too loudly; I am dazed.
The silken sound of whirled infinity
Is lost in voices shouting to be heard.
I once knew men as earnest and less shrill.
An undermeaning that I caught I miss
Among these ears that hear all sounds save silence,
These eyes that see so much but not the sky,
These minds that gain all knowledge but no calm.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
But I oh, I must go . . .
Back to . . .  
Where there is still a plain simplicity,
And friendship, poor in everything but love,
And faith, unwise, unquestioned, but a star . . .”

That’s what I’m looking for, a place “Where there is still a plain simplicity, / And friendship, poor in everything but love, / And faith, unwise, unquestioned, but a star.” I’ll leave youth for the young and stay where I am, because I believe I’ve found what I’m looking for not in an elixir of youth but in the scriptures of life—a home, a story in which I can be swept up until I find the simplicity, friendship, and faith I’ve been hungering for.

Come to the scriptures with whatever you have: skepticism, or curiosity, or faith of any kind. Just come. Come with even a little faith, a restless, struggling faith that’s full of questions and doubt. Come with little faith like that of the disciples in the boat with Jesus on that stormy night at sea (Mark 4:35-41), the kind of little faith easily distracted by life’s trials, the kind that says, “I believe God can, but I’m not sure he will.” You will find in the scriptures wisdom to live with the questions and a surprisingly enriching openness in your doubt.

Or come with great faith, the kind that looks beyond the stormy surface of life to the invisible depths of existence, the life that endures. Come with great faith that trusts what cannot be seen and reaches into the uncertainty and darkness and says, “I know God can, and he will.” You will find in the scriptures what St. Paul promised, that in your affliction you will find endurance, and in your endurance a deeper character, and in that deeper character a hope that never fails (Rom. 5:3-4).

Or come with perfect faith, the kind that sees God in every aspect of life, the kind that knows there is a time and season for everything and that God has made everything suitable for its time (Eccles. 3:1-8, 11). Come with the perfect faith that in the storm sleeps with Jesus in the back of the boat and says, “I know God can, and he has already done it.” And you will find the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, the peace that will guard your hearts and minds from every assault (Phil. 4:7).

There’s good food in the words of scripture: devour them. There’s nourishment in the words of scripture: find joy and your heart’s delight in them. Read them with skepticism or curiosity or faith—little faith, or great faith, or perfect faith—and find in them life, abundant life, more and better life than you ever dreamed of having.