"Wondering" in the Wilderness

DateLine (7/12/06 – Ponce, PR)

One night earlier this week my mind woke up before my body, it was 3:30 AM. I don’t know about you but I don’t like it when that happens. Try as hard as I may, my body can never convince my mind to go back to sleep. So there I lay a fully conscious mind captive to a comatose body. I’ve been told that this condition is a precursor to old age, it must be true because it’s starting to happen to me with more frequency. The only thing that you can do is lay there and think. Come to think of it some of my more lucid and creative thoughts come to me while lying in the dark. I guess all that energy that is being conserved by the body is being funneled to the brain. So keep a pad and pencil on the nightstand just in case my mind can convince my hand to reach over and chronicle the thoughts.

While in this state the irony of this past weeks’ Sunday School experience hit me like brick. We’re in the process of taking a virtual tour of the “Land of the Bible” via an internet site call BiblePlaces.com. Our area of focus this past week was the Negev and the wilderness area of southern Israel. This area is famous for being the majority of the space where the Hebrew “wilderness wanderings” occurred. The Hebrews were led from bondage to the Egyptians only to be thrust into one of the most barren and odd landscapes in all of the world.

Much of this area sees less than 6” annual rain. Raleigh, NC saw 6” of rain in one afternoon recently when a tropical storm came over. Imagine the difficulty of feeding and hydrating what has been estimated to be close to 3 million Hebrews as they wandered for 40 years. No wonder Moses struck the rock to produce water. No wonder God had to make extraordinary provision for His people (fire by night, cloud by day, manna, etc.) No wonder that the Hebrews began to grumble that it all may have been a mistake. Itinerants; totally dependent on God for their sustenance, without the prospects for short term relief. Enslavement behind them; motivated forward by God’s promise of a new life; discouraged by the military might of those who occupied their dream.

I know that this will sound over-dramatic but hang with me, here’s where the irony comes in. Some of us wandered down the hall last week toward a new home (i.e. Sunday School classroom). We were uncomfortable for a few moments as we were wrenched from our normal Sunday routines. We had to find a new place to sit because the room configuration was different. We had some technical snafus as we tried to make our “teaching technology” work. All for the promise of a bigger more effective Sunday School class. Nothing on the scale of what the Hebrews experienced mind you but it does drive home a point. We’re all dependent on God. He gives provisions for the journey. He’s promised a better place; our final destination. We must trust His leadership even if it appears to go in circles sometimes. We operate on His timetable. We will occupy the promise, eventually.

What’s God got in store for our new Sunday School venture? I can’t say with certainty, but I do know that just as Joshua and the Hebrew faithful discovered several thousand years ago, the land will flow with milk and honey. And I do know that “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” Matt. 18:20. If God is in our midst what more could we possibly need, even in a wilderness?