Map of Life — Introduction

Analogy of the Map

We need a map

When you roam the world on foot, by car, by train, by boat, or by plane, you might see lots of places, some in great detail, some far away, but it will always be difficult to arrange all the places and things you have seen in their proper place and proportion. You only need to go around a long sweeping bend in the road, and without the sun or other object as a reference, you can easily lose your bearings. To know where you are in the world, or to set out to reach anywhere else in the world, you really need a map.

Similarly, when travelling through life, it is difficult to put everything you experience and learn in its proper relation to other things. Every day is a journey within the journey of a whole life. How does everything fit together? Many an old thinker has rocked back and forth and pondered whether his life has had coherance or value, whether it has had any purpose, what it has all meant, what in fact is meaning of life. He has tried to create his own map with his reason, but without help from the outside, he will continue to rock back and forth in perplexity. We all need a map of life. Fortunately we have one. It is the map given to us by Divine Revelation.

We have to trust the authority of the map-maker

We need the map at the start of our journey, for it is more useful then, which means that we have to have faith in the map-maker. 

Similarly, we need the map of life at the start of life's journey, rather than in our declining years. This means we have to have faith in the author of Divine Revelation Who is God.