Lake Junaluska is a conference center for United Methodists in the mountains of North Carolina. The first thing any visitor notices is the giant cross on top of a hill. When it's illuminated at night, it shines for miles, a beacon that draws Christians from the southeast and from all over North America every summer.

A few years ago, I went to bed one night at Lake Junaluska with the resolve to climb the hill early the next morning as both physical exercise and spiritual pilgrimage. When I got on my jogging shoes and left the Terrace Hotel, an extreme fog engulfed me. It was so foggy, in fact, that I couldn't locate the cross. It was totally enshrouded in the mist and clouds. Even the path to the cross was hard to follow because of all the haze.

The spiritual journey is like that. We all …