Mountains and Wilderness

Most of us would rather talk about mountain top experiences rather than the wilderness experiences of our lives.  The mountain top experiences are those holy moments when the sacred breaks into the secular part of our world in a powerful and life changing way.  They are experiences which make for memorable testimonies.  On the other hand, the experiences associated with the wilderness moments in our lives are usually hard and difficult times when it often seems that the Holy One has forsaken us.  The end result of the wilderness experience is often a powerful life changing moment, but seldom do we associate such moments with being in the wilderness.

 

Of course, both of these extreme experiences do not really have geographic settings, but speak symbolically of our spiritual journey.  The Holy Spirit leads us into some wilderness experiences as is the case with the temptation event known by Jesus after His baptism (Luke 4:1) and some are self-imposed.  The self-imposed ones come to us because of the way we ignore and neglect the practice of cultivating and maintaining a relationship with Christ.  When we are too busy to practice the presence, a spiritual dryness sets into our heart which often feels as if God has deserted us.  The reality is not that He has deserted us, but that we have deserted Him.

But, let it also be affirmed that there are those moments when God might choose to step back in order for us to learn more about what it means to walk in faith.  Do we only trust Him when things are going well?  Is our love for Him somehow given according to how we sense He is blessing us?  Are we being taken to a place such as Mt. Moriah where Abraham was asked to sacrifice everything for God?  Even as God might choose to make His presence powerfully known, He may also choose to be silent so that we might know more completely our own heart.  A wilderness experience does not fit neatly into a box because it is a means by which God brings us to a place He wants us to be.