When The Wilderness Is Real

There are very few true wildernesses left in the world. Certainly not within easy reach of me here in Appomattox County, Virginia. If Moses had to lead the Israelites to The Promised Land today, he’d have Siri, MapQuest and GPS technologies available to him. They’d cross the Jordan River with little delay.
So, relating to the prophet Isaiah’s wilderness passages might be harder for us than it was for someone in Jesus’ day.
“…I will make a way in the wilderness…” God promises in Isaiah. But we hardly ever need God’s help through physical places of wilderness in the world.
Looking down from this hillside at James River State Park, I see a wild profusion of trees, bushes, meadows, marshland and the bluff rising steeply above the opposite bank. There, too, is the river, itself, glimpsed in flowing snatches between the white-trunked trees. There is a feel of wilderness and the surrounding howl of coyotes last night emphasized that impression. But, then I turn around and see the cabins, the cars, and the paved roadway in the morning’s light.
And in my hand is a map of every trail through this slice of natural wonder 30 minutes down the road from my home. The trails are also well marked and blazed. If I forget the map, as I probably will, no grave problem will arise.
Still, I believe God’s promise. We all can believe it. God will make a way in the wilderness for us. And I know I need it.
The wildernesses most of us face in our lifetimes are those occasions that make us feel lost and alone. Whether it’s the loss of a job, an illness, the death of a loved one, a decision about where to go to college…or a difficult memory, life is full of wilderness moments that turn our mapped and modern world into a tangled maze.
Such occasions create wilderness feelings inside us and that is where we often get lost. Thankfully, God is there to help us through such times. “…I will make a way in the wilderness,” God promises me, and promises you.
As important as those eight words are, the words that come before them hold the key to following God out of the wilderness in which we are lost and wandering, especially if there is something deep in our lives that we find troubling, something perhaps even years ago that still creates coyote-howling wilderness moments in our otherwise orderly and civilized lives.
“Do not remember the former things,” God urges us, through the prophet’s writing, “or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
Those are words that provide us with an internal and eternal map through our wilderness moments. They are words that blaze a trail to what is, in truth, a “promised land” that God offers us all, one that abounds with love and grace.
Don’t dwell on hurts and pains and sorrows, God is telling us.
Have faith in that new thing that God is about to do. Like the leaves budding on the trees and the daffodils dotting the landscape, what God promises will spring up—is springing up now, somehow, if we turn our minds from whatever wilderness has us in its grasp and discover, instead, the God-sent feeling that is springing up in our hearts and in our souls—springing up in that deepest part of ourselves.
God is marking the trail through our trials and tribulations. Let us each journey with faith in that guiding love and grace which leads us out of the wilderness by actually transforming the wilderness, itself, giving us rivers in the desert and turning the howl of coyotes into the sound of cooing doves of peace.