Examples of His practice of solitude are found throughout the Gospels: “But He Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray” (Luke 5:16). The Gospels record Jesus seeking solitude in a wilderness to be alone with the Father more than forty times. On one hand, our wilderness may be a place where we feel alone-but it can also be a place of an undistracted separation and solitude, and a closeness to God. The wilderness may mean separation from what is familiar, but also separation to God.
The Jewish Publication Society translation of Exodus 3:1 reads, “Moses went to the farthest end of the wilderness.” Wilderness separation is perhaps to the farthest side of the familiar.
The Wilderness Is a Place of Quiet and Listening There are varieties of wilderness, but whatever kind of wilderness we find ourselves, of whatever description, it is a place of separation and preparation. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”Īs with Abraham, our journey through times of wilderness relies on growing trust and connection with God. Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great and so you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. To escape the pull and distractions of Ur, Abram had to leave the familiar. “By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance and he went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). Most of the people who amounted to anything in the Bible of human existence went through times of wilderness. I once heard a precious sister say, “I’m not sure where I’m going, but I’m sure I’ll get there.” In the wilderness, of whatever kind, the paths are unfamiliar. Our personal wilderness seems to lack life or potential, causing us to give in to doubt or discouragement and feelings of being alone in the face of the formidable, unfamiliar, and untamed landscape before us. To find your way out, you must become acquainted with its terrain and learn to follow the sometimes hard-to-find trail that leads to healing. Yet you must journey through this wilderness. You are in the midst of unfamiliar and often brutal surroundings. Think of your grief as a wilderness-a vast, mountainous, inhospitable forest. The wilderness can be growing older, sitting on the frontier of retirement. Maybe we find ourselves in a wilderness of financial crisis or career loss. We may find ourselves in a wilderness of a medical waiting room waiting to hear test results for ourselves or a loved one.
There are many kinds of wilderness, from financial wilderness to cultural wilderness. The key to our English wilderness word is wild.Ī wilderness is a wild or uncultivated place where we don’t know the rules-where there is no map or GPS to get us around. Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God (Exodus 3:1).
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