When I started the assignment process, the process one goes through in my denomination to receive your first call as a pastor of a congregation having just completed seminary, I was told that it can feel like you’re wandering in the wilderness. The Israelites wandered for 40 years with God guiding them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
Since then, I’ve learned a lot about wandering. At the beginning you think you can do it. Fresh on the promise of God to lead to the promised land, it’s no wonder the Israelites left Egypt. But how quickly things change. The Israelites were ready to give up in no time. I’m starting to understand where they’re coming from. As the journey presses on you learn that it’s tiring. Wandering, never sure where it is you’re headed or even when you’ll get there exhausts you in ways you never thought possible. It’s a fatigue of the heart. Not knowing where to go, or what fork in the road to take, the landscape starts to look the same. Landmarks seem to repeat themselves and you wonder if you’re going in circles, or perhaps if you made a mistake in beginning the journey. Doubt begins to become paralyzing.
Weariness sets in and hope seems almost too distant to grasp. For me, in this wandering, just when I’m about to give up, there has been a flicker of promise, a flash of sustenance, a delivery of manna that gives me the strength to keep going one more day. But that’s the thing about manna—just enough. No more. The Israelites were told to gather only enough for one day, to trust that God would send more. I can see why they struggled. When you’ve been wandering for a while, at the end of what you think you can survive, the fear of starvation, of withering away from a lack of hope is palpable. How hungry I am for more sustenance. How much I wish I controlled the portions.
I don’t know what it was like for the Israelites, but I find that as days turn to weeks and weeks to months in this wandering, day doesn’t seem come very often and darkness presses in heavy. When I began this journey I felt as though I could breathe in the tiny droplets from the cloud by day, the moisture seeping into me and smell the smoke of the fire by night. God’s presence was intimate and immediate. I never imagined that I’d still be wandering, seemingly no closer to the end than when I started. The light of day is gone and I grope for the fire by night.
Though God never abandoned the Israelites during their wandering, I wonder if they lost sight of him. When you’re truly lost and wandering it can seem like no one is leading, it can seem like you’re on this journey in isolation. It can seem as though God is so distant. I feel as if I can’t see where I’m going and the cloud and fire that once hung so close have vanished from my sight. How I yearn for the heat from pillar of fire, that my cheek might be warm to the touch from the blaze. How I ache deep down for my eyes to burn from the smoke. It seems all I glimpse are embers, faintly glowing against a cold darkness. I wait for them to catch fire, but tongues of flame never emerge. Regardless of culture, it appears to be human nature to put our hands together to attempt to generate some warmth. And so in the faint glow barely visible amidst my wandering in the wilderness, I’m learning to clasp my hands together over the embers, intertwining my fingers in prayer as I wait for the breath of God to blow the embers into a flicker that I might feel just a tiny rush of warmth, the promise that the wandering doesn’t last forever. Though the pillar of fire is not visible to me in this cold, harsh wilderness where embers just faintly glowing orange against a black backdrop, I continue walking, hands clasped, holding fast to one truth; though I may not be able to see it now, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.
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