From Strength to Strength

From Strength to Strength

Psalm 84 is a pilgrim psalm — written for those traveling to Jerusalem for the great festivals. The journey was long, hot, and arduous. The 'Valley of Baka' (verse 6) was a dry, difficult place. And yet the pilgrims who were set on the journey experienced a mysterious strengthening: not a diminishing to exhaustion but a going 'from strength to strength.' The more they traveled, the stronger they became. A marathon runner who became a Christian described his first reading of this psalm: 'I thought it was physically impossible — I know what exhaustion does to a body. Then I realized he's describing something that normal physics doesn't account for. Divine provision in the journey. Yes. I've experienced that too.'

Psalm 84:7 describes the paradox of the spiritual journey: it is not the easy path that produces the greatest spiritual capacity but the demanding one. The pilgrims going up to Zion in the scorching heat are not wearing down — they are growing stronger with each stage. This is the logic of spiritual formation: the difficulties of the journey, undertaken in trust, produce the very strength they seem to threaten. From strength to strength — not from strength to weakness, not from energy to exhaustion, but from one level of capacity to the next. Each stage of the journey, however hard, is a graduation into greater capacity for the next stage. You are not wearing out. You are growing strong for what comes next.