Several years ago, some visitors were planning to join us here at Greencastle Presbyterian. They were coming from Terre Haute, which isn't too far nor too complicated. To get here, the driver simply typed in our church's address and began following the directions coming from Google Maps. An hour later they were out in the middle of a cornfield, clearly lost and having no idea how to get back to Terre Haute let alone to our church.
A lot of people today know all too well what our expected visitors felt that day. Despite having all sorts of resources and feeling themselves fairly competent, they can't help but feel like they've ended up out in the middle of nowhere - wondering how they'll get back or where to go from there. And technology - our supposed and often cited modern savior - has only guided them off the map into the middle of nowhere.
I am hearing this a lot from people I care about. Since coming back from vacation, I've had two or three conversations with folks working at DePauw, sharing with me how strange and disorienting this past year has felt. And just ... well, hard.
For those who don't know, DePauw has undergone a great deal of loss this past year, with well over fifty people either leaving or being let go from their positions. That's a big hole to fill for a tight, close community. Those loses are hearts and minds to share life's journey with. Those are coworkers who have shared more than office space. So, this summer, when the student body is already largely absent, some of my own friends are struggling with feeling a bit lost and lonely.
In short, there's a lot of uncertainty, something like I'm sure those visitors felt way out in the cornfields of Parke County.
What happened?
Who messed up?
And how did I get myself out of this situation?
One of the biggest reasons I keep reading pieces and parts of our holy Scriptures is that occasionally, I'll stumble across a word or phrase or sentence that will just lift the fog we are bound to experience in life. Recently, it was this little tid-bit from the book of Deuteronomy 8 of all places: "Remember how for these forty years the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the wilderness, …".
Directed is the very last word the Israelites would have used to describe their experience in the desert. Everything they were experiencing and encountering externally and internally was telling them that they were lost, desperately and uncomfortably lost. That's where that other word comes in: wilderness.
As a biblical word, wilderness connotes so much more than just an arid desert place (or the Midwestern equivalent: cornfields stretching in all four directions with nary a sight of civilization). Wilderness expresses and captures that human experience we are bound to have in life: when there are no obvious signs or consolations that we're headed in the right direction. Wilderness is what happens in the middle part of Dr. Suess's great parable Oh, The Places You Will Go, when …
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted, but mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right ...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, and I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
You can get so confused that you'll start to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles cross weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place ...
Aka "wilderness."
It is no fun thing to experience wilderness times, and my heart aches for my friends … and for a school that I love and that has meant a lot to me. But, this experience is not isolated just to our local university, is it?
Wilderness is becoming the modern cultural experience as we have left the stability and ease of Egypt in a time of transformation and uncertainty.
Which is why this simple sentence from Deuteronomy seems like such good news today. It's a word that is offered like a type of manna for us, something we can hold onto and chew on a bit today and each day after.
The wilderness - although intense and prolonged - was not endless.
The wilderness - although disorienting - was not the final truth.
God "directed" this experience, as confusing and uncertain as it was.
And we can trust that God directs all of the most disorienting experiences we enter into, everything from misguided trips to job losses to being sick to going through a rough patch as a family.
But it's important to add that other part of the phrase. "God, has directed all your journeying …". Journeying captures the messiness of our reality. Journeying also ties together the two realities we bounce between: the "wilderness" and the "directed." Journeying is where we most often find ourselves, somewhere between a clear sense of God's presence in our lives and a lonely place of isolation out in the desert of life.
So, we hold on in faith during our journeying, trusting that God is indeed guiding us to the next good thing (Prov. 3:5,6).
Know of my prayers if you're in that place of journeying and waiting.
And, oh, those visitors out in the cornfields? They made it. A phone call to our church, a few quick directions and a few good laughs, and they were right here with us.
The promised place is always down the road.
God bless you on your own journey,
~Pastor Wes
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