Tag Archives: Wilderness

Truth on Tap

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One of God’s truest gifts to any of us is a stiff sip of realistic self-knowledge.

For Christians who embrace the Lenten season, there is a wilderness consciousness that takes hold, an active stepping into an environment–or at least a mindset–that strips away life’s non-essentials. Mirages in the desert often revolve around things we desperately need (ie: water or a place to rest). The Lenten “wilderness” experience often serves to strip away illusions of what we need, or even who we are.

Along these lines, Teresa of Avila had a favorite metaphor:

“The soul is like water in a glass: water looks very clear if the sun does not shine on it; but when the sun shines on it, it seems to be full of dust particles.”

waterIn Psalm 139, the writer celebrates God’s complete knowledge of each one of us. Yahweh is the One who has knit us together before any eye beheld us. He goes before us, comes behind us, and hovers around us. Even still, the psalmist–in the spirit of Teresa–closes by praying that God will search his deepest parts and unearth any offensive and life-stealing tendencies. There is an awareness of just how deep self-deception can go.

If prayer is a struggle, perhaps you have now discovered a rock-solid starting block from which to take your first strides.  Begin by pleading for purity of soul, for an inner substance that is whole and clear.  Ask the Revealer to provide you with vivid and truthful exposure of all that lies within you. Some will be surprising, some downright shocking. Parts of the experience will affirm you; others will infirm you.

Either way, “the truth shall set you free” is perhaps true first as it pertains to discovery about ourselves. At God’s pub, He’s got truth on tap.

And He’s happy to pour a pint for those who are seeking.

YOUR TURN: What has God revealed to you about yourself? Which revelations have been encouraging? Which have been humbling? How have any such revelations served as “truth that set you free”? Your input makes this post better!

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More Fruitful than Feverish Activity

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We are infatuated with ourselves.

Fearfully and wonderfully made, we are filled with power to shape the lives we lead, along with the world in which we live. Bearing the divine image, we are endowed with the potential for significant influence and impact. Indeed, we are weighty beings.

It is this “batting stance” that struggles to process a quote like the following:

“Coming before God in quietness and waiting upon Him in silence can accomplish more than days of feverish activity.”

wilderness2Tied into this realization, from A.W. Tozer, is a key strand of wilderness teaching. Ancient Israel was enrolled in a forty-year course toward grasping that their taking of the Promised Land would actually have nearly nothing to do with their ability to take Promised Land. This was to be deeply humbling and highly empowering at the same bizarre time!

So much of our lives are spent stressing over the challenges we must overcome or the standards we must meet. God wants His people clear that the works truly need undertaking within our surroundings and selves will require larger hands and finer craftsmanship. In these ventures, worshipful seeking holds more power than wild striving.

In a related theme, Barbara Brown Taylor describes the Sabbath rhythm as “a practice in death”. This is equally a theme of the Lenten season as well as a central strand to the Christian Gospel.

To be sure, God offers new life in His Son and fresh breath by His Spirit. It just requires a dead soul and a panting spirit to press us into a posture ready for such gifts.

That is why God loves the wilderness, because His people need it so.

 

 

 

Lent is a Wilderness Season

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Early in Luke’s gospel, he details the rise of John the Baptist’s public ministry.  His third chapter begins by rooting John in time by surrounding him with the “vital statistics” of his day:

1 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Most of these names mean little to today’s reader; most of these places are unknown. But in John’s (and Jesus’) day, these were the high rollers in the power centers. These were the figures writing the rules and making the waves.

And fascinatingly, God uses them as the background music for the scene that He is unfolding.

Into this time and place, God’s word arrived.

His message would inaugurate His move. And that word was delivered to a no-man in the no-man’s land: John in the wilderness.

Judean Wilderness

The wilderness of Scripture is the academy of the saints.

It was the scene of Moses’ leadership course in Midian, as Yahweh transformed an angry murderer into a surrendered deliverer. It was the venue for Israel’s forty-year shaping, which cost them an entire generation, on how to live as freed people in the Promised Land. It was also the setting for Jesus to be tested by the Adversary, ahead of his public ministry.

Luke depicts John the Baptist, also in the wilderness, seeking and listening.  The human eye can quickly glaze over at the vastness and blankness of the wilderness, and one small man in its midst can seem like dust.

Yet Luke, having sketched all the people and places where logic might expect Divinity to deliver His message, is explicit that this word is addressed to the simple one in the silent place: “The word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

Lent is a wilderness season.

It drives us into modes of reflection and recounting. We agree with God on the terms of full access that He might search us and freely reveal—even rebuke—whatever that He finds.  The wilderness, by its nature, is a refining environment. It swallows those who ill-equipped to dwell there. It silently pushes people toward precipices, where survival is uncertain.

Lent, by its nature, is the seeking of such an environment.  As did John, we place ourselves in a wilderness setting—via fasting or forgiving, reflecting or repenting—because we know that people who are at the ends of themselves, dwelling on the ends of the earth, are often those upon whom the life-giving word of God falls first.