We sing a song here at Crossroads Church called Out of the Wilderness.  It is a wonderfully upbeat song of celebration at having come through times of trial and difficult striving.  With music and lyrics by Trent Austin, it offers the hope that God’s “grace has brought us out of the wilderness.”  Stepping out of the wilderness, especially after an extended time of wandering, is a great goal.  We sang the song in worship for our Tenth-Anniversary celebration this past Sunday.

I want you to consider that there is also blessing in the wilderness.  In terms of biblical imagery, Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years and, on the way, people encountered their own demons.  Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days before encountering the temptations of Satan.  The wilderness was a place of hardship and also a place of discovery.  It is the image of encountering demonic power and divine providence.  The wilderness is a sacred space for finding ourselves, our God, and our lives within the life of God.

I am sending this to you on Ash Wednesday, the time, in the Christian tradition for beginning an intentional journey into the wilderness.  During the season of Lent, we are invited to take a symbolic journey of forty days, not counting Sundays.  This is a journey toward the promise of new life at Easter.  Whatever your faith tradition, or if you do not embrace one, still the promise of going into and coming out of the wilderness is a powerful and essential journey.

The journeys of our lives in the wilderness are not only symbolic.  They are very tangible and often very painful.  Looking at our world today, there is the wilderness of global economic recession and of an economic crisis looming with health care, Medicare, and social security threatening insolvency.  Beyond all these, there is a global climate crisis potentially threatening all life on earth.  And, of course, there are our individual challenges such as that of getting or keeping a job, finding meaningful work, and coping with catastrophic illness or the challenges of parenting in this postmodern age.  As a pastor, there seems to me to be a clear crisis within Christianity and other religions.  This crisis takes shape around a variety of issues including:  fundamentalism, fear, and an encroaching irrelevance in terms of offering meaning for peoples’ lives

I invite you, whatever your faith tradition or philosophical predisposition, to walk through these next forty days with the attitude of a pilgrim rather than a tourist.  Be in the wilderness for the purpose of finding your identity more clearly and of experiencing the numinous and mystical quality of life more intentionally.  Let the wilderness be a sacred space in which the miracle that life is fills and overflows your living, and the presence of the present brings to you a new birth of wonder, grace, and holiness.  I look forward to seeing you there in the wilderness and on the journey.

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price FYI - Jack has published several articles at: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Jack_F_Price

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