Encounter in the Wilderness

Have you ever felt as if you have lost something on which you most depend? Perhaps your health or your physical abilities have been compromised. Perhaps you have lost a job or financial security. Maybe you are disconnected from your spouse, friends or family. Or perhaps you just feel emotionally disconnected from God.

Regardless of what certain ‘prosperity Gospel’ preachers might tell you, there is nothing wrong with you. You aren’t being punished for some unspecified crime. You are not suffering because you are ‘unclean’ in some way. God is not shunning you. You have not taken a wrong turn in your spiritual journey.

On the contrary, such debilitating experiences are not only par for the course in our spiritual journey, they are the very conditions in which we grow and deepen our knowledge of God. If you are feeling deprived materially, physically, emotionally, psychologically or spiritually, you stand in good company.

Consider, for instance, the people of Israel. According to the Old Testament Scriptures, God took Israel out of Egypt, where they were enslaved but relatively comfortable, and brought them into the wilderness, where they wandered for forty years with no established dwelling place, with nothing to eat or drink, other than what God miraculously provided for them. In addition to these material deprivations, they suffered illness and death, saw friends and family perish, and endured God’s wrath at their faithlessness and disobedience.

In the Orthodox Christian interpretation, the Old Testament narratives are ultimately a prophecy of the Person of Jesus Christ. In a personal fulfillment of Israel’s collective exile, Jesus is taken as an infant into Egypt. Later, he enters the desert, where he is tempted and fed by angels. His ministry begins and is mostly directed at those who live “beyond the Jordan” (Matthew 4:25 and elsewhere), which in scriptural geography symbolizes the wilderness from which Israel came before it entered the Promised Land. Finally, Jesus is crucified outside the walls of Jerusalem, which the New Testament writer to the Hebrews likens to the wilderness “outside the camp” of Israel. (Hebrews 13:11-14)

Jesus’ experience of human life as a wilderness is crucial to the Christian confession that he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Phil. 2:7-8) Only in the condition of utter humility, utter emptiness, utter brokenness, stripped of all human power and aid, could God’s power full shine forth in him. Only by being crucified as a criminal outside the camp could He be exalted on the third day and receive “the name which is above every name,” the Son of God to whom all authority in heaven and on earth is given. (See Phil. 2:9 and Matt. 28:18)

What does this mean for us? Simply that, for Christians at least, the wilderness experience is central to our encounter with God. When we are stripped of dependence on human aid, whether that involves losing our physical health or material resources, or being deprived of emotional or psychological or spiritual convictions in our hearts and minds, we are embarking on nothing less important and significant than the journey to the Cross of Christ, where the power and glory of God shines forth most brightly.

Of course, knowing that being “united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his,” (Romans 6:5) does not in any way alleviate the physical pain of an illness, the uncertainty of unemployment, or the agony of family division and conflict. Regardless of what we know to be true in our minds, when we find ourselves in the thick of our wilderness sufferings, we cannot help but cry out with the Psalmist, “O LORD, why do You cast me off? Why do You hide Your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14)

Faced with such circumstances, I have often recalled the words of the poet T.S. Eliot: “I have lost sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch; how can I use them for your closer contact?” Notice to whom the poet addresses his question. In the wilderness, I am stripped of every support and help, including my own ability to reason out and comprehend why this is happening to me. My only option is to throw myself outward to a Power greater than myself, who alone can show forth the light in my darkness, the resurrection in my crucifixion. All I can do is ask Him the questions, and wait for Him to show the answers.

Those answers may be slow in coming (often they come only years in retrospect) and are often couched in unexpected and surprising terms. For this wanderer in the spiritual wilderness, however, they have always come in the end.

If you stand in the wilderness of your life today, devoid of all other earthly help, you stand on the front line of the spiritual battle, for you have come the place where you can truly encounter the One who will lead you “through the great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there [is] no water… that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end.” (Deut. 8:15-16)

Vacation

Vacation—it’s a common yearly reality. We pack up the luggage, load up the vehicle, and journey to some distant place to spend several days to be rejuvenated for the coming months.

Often, we think of a vacation as a more extravagant form of escape from the daily routines of ordinary life. Life at home is frustrating, tedious, and perhaps even painful. TV, video games, and fantasy novels no longer suffice. It’s time to run away before we collapse under the burden.

I recognize this temptation in myself, but my experience of vacation this year, more than affording me an escape from my life, has taught me some important and ultimately, refreshing spiritual lessons.

Firstly, I have learned the elementary lesson that people don’t really change from place to place. Traveling to England has been a significant shift in many respects. The geography and culture are different. And though the language is fundamentally similar, British usage is different enough to be awkward.

And yet, despite this strangeness, people here struggle with the same fundamental realities as they do in Canada. They live with economic uncertainty. They pay bills. They save money. They visit their elderly parents, or baby-sit their grandchildren. They take their siblings out for a birthday supper.

This fact of life would seem obvious, but I tend to be slow on the uptake. For some reason, I have tended to assume that people in different places and cultures really are different people, among whom I can find some kind of reprieve from the “normal” human beings back home.

This vacation, however, has shown me that if you spend any length of time in a foreign place, you will soon discover that people there are just as irritating and lovable, complicated and straightforward as they were where you came from. To put it simply, there are no greener pastures, no real escapes from the challenges of being part of the human race.

Secondly, I have learned that wherever you go, you always bring yourself. If you were discontented and unhappy in Cranbrook, chances are you will be discontented and unhappy in England (or wherever). Your exotic activities may conceal the fact for a while, and if you have enough money, you may well maintain the illusion for the entire vacation. However, in the quieter moments, you will soon discover that the person who goes about their daily business at, say, the Salvation Army every week, is still yearning for the same deeper fulfillment, even if he is thousands of miles away, watching a performance of Macbeth on the lawn of Bodiam Castle.

In other words, vacation cannot be an escape from ourselves any more than it can be an escape from other people. Rather than using time away as a psychological anaesthetic for our personal pains, we might perhaps use it as a magnifying lens through which we can see our hearts more clearly.

In foreign environments, we are likely to be more uncertain, less sure of ourselves, and more likely to resort to behaviour that is closer to our true nature. This is not a bad thing, and it can really help us refocus on those aspects of our personality that may need a little more work during the rest of the year.

This brings me to my final lesson: there is no vacation from the spiritual life. If you are a churchgoer like me, you may be tempted to think of vacation as an opportunity to sleep in on Sunday morning. This may work for you, but I have found it costs more than it is worth. In a new and strange place, I need God’s Presence more than ever if I am not to lose my sense of lasting peace and security.

Home has a way of diminishing our need for God. Driving our own vehicle (on the right side of the road), sleeping in our own bed, performing our familiar routines and rituals, we can easily forget that His hands uphold our world. In a faraway land, however, where nothing is quite so dependable, we have the opportunity to discover again what the Apostle Peter learned when he stood on the stormy seas and beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Far from being a time to set church and prayer aside, vacation is a way to refocus our spiritual lives and get a new grip on our relationship with God. As inconvenient or difficult as it may be to find a church to attend or pray in a strange context, the sacrifices we make in doing so will stretch and grow us in ways that are just not possible in the comforts of our home turf.

You may have heard of the Geographic Cure. I see it too frequently: a person moves to escape from whatever difficulties they may be facing in their current location. In some cases, a shift of geography can be helpful (for instance, when someone is fleeing an abusive relationship), but many other cases, the Geographic Cure is pure snake oil. In the end, people find that wherever they go, there they are and there is everyone else. Disillusion and despair soon follow.

If you are inclined to use your vacation this year as a temporary Geographic Cure, let me suggest that you instead use the time to revisit your life and revitalize it with a richer, deeper awareness of God, yourself, and others. The worst part of most vacations is coming home, but here is an alternative: coming home with joy, revitalized, refreshed, and ready for new adventures in the everyday.