Wilderness

For some time now, I’ve felt a sense of restlessness, or an incompleteness in my life with which I wrestle with from time-to-time. It may in fact be nothing more than getting used to the mild disappointments of middle age: not-quite-realized dreams, heartfelt losses and failures both great and minor, or simply an all-too-familiar pattern of daily life.

Wilderness

For some time now, I’ve felt a sense of restlessness, or an incompleteness in my life with which I wrestle with from time-to-time. It may in fact be nothing more than getting used to the mild disappointments of middle age: not-quite-realized dreams, heartfelt losses and failures both great and minor, or simply an all-too-familiar pattern of daily life.

And always there’s the ageless question: What am I doing here?

Don’t worry, I promise not to get too existential this evening. But I do want to explore the sense of being in a “wilderness.” A dry, extended place where, no matter how long you look or how far you walk, all you see are miles and miles of distant, blurry horizon. You keep walking and walking but never seem to get any closer to finding -- or perhaps even knowing -- what it is you’re searching for.

I don’t know how many of you read the Forward Day by Day devotional series, but over the years it has become a critical companion and guide to my daily quiet time. In fact, I have taken to tearing out the pages of those days whose author, message or Biblical passage has a particular impact on me.

This year the publishers have been reprinting entries from years gone by in celebration of their 75th anniversary. I have been moved by the timelessness of human concerns, as well as God’s response to them. I don’t know his or her name but in 2004, a Day by Day author wrote:

“There is within us a huge God-shaped space that can be filled only by God. Many people do not realize this and seek to fill it with something else. But food and drink. Health and good looks will not fill it. The affection and admiration of other people will not fill it. No peak human experience -- art, rewards, childbirth, drugs, glories, honors, music, sex -- can fill it... only God can fill what was meant only for God.”

I find solace knowing that others are searching for something to fill that hollow space within each us even if the answer is, by the author’s definition, quite obvious. He or she goes on to quote Saint Augustine addressing God: “You awaken and stir us so that only in praising you can we be content. You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

But knowing what the answer is doesn’t automatically resolve our restlessness or calm our anxious searching. Often we choose to ignore it altogether or bury it under any number of distractions. In 1982, another Day by Day author wrote, “One of the hardest things to do is to wait, especially in silence. Yet if we cannot wait, if we are unwilling to remain faithful in silence, the word we hear will more likely be our own, springing up from anxious spirits, and having little to do with the quieter, deeper, and usually more radical word that is of the Lord.”

Waiting and remaining faithful in silence is, for me, a difficult choice not only because of my impatience but also because of the temptation to slip into complacency or isolation. Sometimes it’s easier to just pull the covers over my head on a cold winter morning than get myself out of bed and come to church.

I read the following scripture from the first and second chapters of Habakkuk one Sunday morning just a few weeks ago, and it struck me how perfectly it spoke to my own life experience -- as God’s word is apt to do:

“O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble?”

As I understand it, a major theme of Habakkuk’s writings is his struggle to grow from a place of doubt and confusion to absolute trust in God and His word. The prophet cries out to God:

“Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.”

A bit pessimistic, perhaps, but how often do we find ourselves surrounded by strife and contention with seemingly no hope in sight? A faithful Habakkuk, however, makes this promise:

“I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.”

God doesn’t promise that everything will be OK, but He does promise that an answer will come. His answer. What’s more, He commands Habakkuk to tell others what he has seen, that all may share the vision:

“Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it.

For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay.”

I’ll close with one more Day by Day author, a former minister who, in 1963, reflected that when our lives feel tired and worn out, it might be time to offer a renewed allegiance to our Creator. When we do, we allow God the opportunity to do wonderful new things for us and within us which earlier hardly seemed possible or even imaginable.

May God bless you this holiday and Advent season. Amen.