Welcoming the Wilderness

The wilderness is a familiar Biblical place. The Hebrew people wander in the wilderness for 40 years on their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. And immediately after his baptism, Jesus is driven into the wilderness where during 40 days he will define his ministry and wrestle with his identity and purpose.

Wilderness times are frightening but also helpful. In the wilderness, there are no signs or directions, no notches on trees to point the way. Wilderness times are tedious and often scary. It's where people like us get confused, frustrated, lost, and even die.

Once you're in the wilderness there is no easy way out. Wilderness times are the years, or days, of being tempted, tried, refined by the fire and the cold, by hunger and thirst, by fear, anger and despair.

But just as we get lost in the wilderness, it is also where we find ourselves. It's where some of us die, but where others get reborn. In wilderness times we travel light. Even if we're heavy with wealth and possessions, they are not as important as they once were.

In the wilderness, we are more than ever on our own, living the questions that are more important than holding on to our tired old answers.

Advent's call to us is to let go...to let go of that protective armor we've spent years fixing and tinkering with. To "prepare the way of the Lord" is to meet John the Baptist in our own wilderness, and stay long enough to hear him out...till we see who we truly are.

Yes, it's a vulnerable place, but if you do not go there, you will never hear the Good News down in your bones, and your faith and your life will remain impoverished.

The promise of Advent is that love will cast out our fear, and that love will indeed conquer our despair. We have the sure hope that someday we will be found in our wilderness, and be rescued by the one whose birth we soon will celebrate.

- THOMAS R. SMITH

Re-published from "spirit", St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA