In the Wilderness

 

The Hebrews found wilderness a difficult place
After 400 years of being told what to do
and when
freedom was a difficult thing
How do you learn to make decisions
find responsibility
think about consequences for others
When there has always only been
words of instruction
how do you hear words of love?

They must be frightening
dismantling
no framework to hang them on

With no experience of freedom
words of love
must be unintelligible

It takes time
to be loved again
to trust again
to find that inner core
that remembers
how we are created
in love
for love

The wilderness
strips away the narrow lines of definition
and slowly
O so slowly
frees you
into the breadth
of new life


Music:    Howard Shore: Lord of the Rings: Evenstar

Of course
God found it no easier
God found Godself
as petulant and God’s People

It works like that:
love

It isn’t a high and mighty thing
that rises above the base emotions
It is the base emotion
it makes you angry
and challenged
and hurt
and broken
and desired
and desiring

this is wilderness too
denuded of the brave face
the stiff upper lip
and prone to
the pain of finding
new balance
in our relationships

God was no different
from Gods People

because they were learning
what it was like
to be in love
with each other

Music:    Howard Shore: Lord of the Rings: Evenstar

Jesus found himself in the wilderness
it was a creative place
a dismantling place
a cathartic experience
of letting go
the ambitions of the world
the devil in the details
of power-broking
and personality
and finding a new reliance
on a love
that is so free
so untied to anything
you could let go
everything
nothing
was necessary
for this world
except love
not of this world
but alive within it
a wilderness experience
of rebirth
renewal
resurrection

Music:    Howard Shore: Lord of the Rings: Evenstar

Our own wildernesses
a place
a time
a relationship
an idea
to strip us of all that has been familiar

a grief
a calamity
a crisis of faith

that leaves us
in wilderness
lost,
where Egypt behind us
feels better
than the unknown before us

This is the yet to be place
the creative
shifting of the rules
the familiars
into some new arrangement
that enables
life
to be possible again

It is a God filled place
of questions
and arguments
of falling out
and falling in

All of that is God
all of it

until the levels are reached
and the love strong enough
to invite
a step
towards the future
unwritten
but already loved

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