Drop Your Bags

Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting,

“Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord!

Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God!” [Isaiah 40:3]

The biblical image of “the wilderness” is a mixed bag - neither inherently good or inherently evil. It seems to be a neutral place, full of possibility and potential. It is often a metaphorical place we enter to discover something about ourselves, the world, God or all of the above.

The Israelites wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years. God gave them this time to shed the old ways of Pharaoh, the ways of slavery, to learn how to depend on God. It was incredibly challenging, full of missteps, lots of learning and painful growth. But finally, after a generation or so they arrived in the promised land. But they still struggled with questions of power and control, of deciding who counted and who didn’t, who was worthy and who wasn’t.

When they entered the wilderness, God was giving them an opportunity - to let go of a dualistic way of life (us/them, insiders/outsiders, for us/against us), to silence the voices competing with the voice of God and to open themselves to what God wanted to do in them for the healing of the whole world.

For the most part, they didn’t see it that way. They couldn’t. They brought with them all their expectations of how life was “supposed to be,” of what they deserved, what they thought they were entitled because of how they had been wronged. Over time, it clouded their hearts and minds with bitterness, disappointment, regret, hopelessness and fear - they couldn’t see God’s way. They couldn’t hear God’s voice.

Even Jesus was forced out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 4:1-11). This was a time of intense turmoil - physical (fasted for 40 days & nights), emotional (alone, not his choice), spiritual (three major tests). Out in the wilderness Jesus too had to contend with all the competing voices - all the demands on him, all the choices and possibilities before him, all the questions and doubts he had.

We are entering a new year, dear friends. Perhaps we are entering a wilderness together, here in our community with all its local quirks and personalities, in our political climate with all the partisan voices blaming and pointing fingers at each other, in our global community - with so many voices and stories we don’t even understand. What baggage of 2017 do we need to leave behind? What assumptions about the world must we let go of? What expectations or entitlements do we need to cast aside?

Let’s drop all that heavy baggage so that we can listen for God’s voice beckoning us from the wilderness, calling us to be part of God’s healing of the world. Happy New Year!