Wilderness Walkers

Back around the third century, individual disciples of Jesus started making permanent pilgrimages into the deserts of Egypt and Syria.  Collectively these men (and some women) became known as the Desert Fathers.  It was a time in history when Christianity had not only become widely accepted, but was the state religion.  Thomas Merton wrote about these wilderness walkers in his introduction to the book, "The Wisdom of the Desert."  "Society was regarded (by St. Anthony and the Desert Fathers) as a shipwreck from which each single individual man or woman had to swim for his life...These were men (The Desert Fathers) who believed that to let oneself drift along passively accepting the tenets and the values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a disaster."

 

As I have verbally rambled through this past week's writing on the wilderness theme, it may have been a bit confusing as to the reason we end up in something akin to a spiritual wilderness.  Is it caused by our sin?  Is it something into which God leads us?  Or, do we experience it as something we are compelled to do by the Spirit? Is it the result of longing, hungering and thirsting after God?  Are we drawn to such moments?  As in the case of The Desert Fathers, are we trying to get to a safer place?  The more I rambled the more it seemed that it might be any of these things or maybe even all of them.  And, of course, there is always the option, "None of the above."

 

What does seem apparent is that we find ourselves in some kind of spiritual wilderness from time to time as we journey toward God.  The Biblical story has a physical setting for the experiences of the wilderness.  Our setting is mostly invisible and spiritual, but it is a setting where God's bidding can be discovered by those who linger.  Against the setting of what might be called ordinary Christian living, we come to those moments when a time apart and away is needed and necessary if we are to know who we are and to Whom we belong.  In such moments we walk not on the mountain where glory abounds, but in the wilderness where we hold nothing in our hands but our longing for God.