On Being in the Wilderness

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

Like me, you’re probably listening to updates from the government, wondering what we can do this week that we weren’t allowed to do last week. Indeed, there has been some lifting of restrictions in recent days, and we’ll continue to monitor their implications for us as a church, especially in terms of when and how we might be able to gather again. For the most part, though, a return to ‘normal’ (remember that?) still seems a fair way off. In our more honest moments most of us sense that to be the case.

As a result, it’s easy to feel betwixt and between at this time – neither one thing nor another, neither where we were when the year started or where we hope we might be when the year ends.

As unsettled as we might feel during this season, we are not the first to walk this path. And we might be encouraged to know that God has worked through such circumstances in the past.

In the book of Exodus, after their deliverance from Egypt and their escape through the sea, God’s people enter the wilderness. It’ll be another two months before they arrive at Mount Sinai where God will make a covenant with them. Meanwhile, the wilderness is an ‘in-between’ place, a transitional moment where the people stand on the boundary of something new, the next chapter in the story of God’s dealings with them and the world they will be called to serve.

But the wilderness is not a place to mark time or to circle the runway. Nor is it a moment for them to grit their teeth and get by. It’s a place of formation. It’s during this period that they are to trust that the God who rescued them is the God who will provide for their daily needs (literally their ‘daily bread’ in the form of manna). It’s in the wilderness that these former slaves learn the rhythm of work and rest, set in place at creation. Their service to Pharaoh has been replaced by their service to God, and growing into their identity as God’s people will require living a different way. In addition, while they were largely passive in the destruction of the Egyptian army, it’s in the wilderness that they have to fight new enemies, showing that they’ll need to take a more active role in events going forwards.

In short, it’s in the wilderness that the God who delivers his people also trains them, forming them into a ‘holy nation’ (Exodus 19:6) who will obey him and represent him to a watching world.

Perhaps for us, too, this is a time to grow our trust in the Lord’s care and provision, a time to reflect on how he is training us to live differently, a time to grow in loving our neighbour as ourself.

So keep listening to those updates from the government. It’s right for us to want to come through this period, to get to the next chapter! Nevertheless, it’s good to remember that God is still at work meanwhile – in us and through us – conforming us to the image of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Exodus #4: The Lord who Tests

There the LORD issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test... Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.’

Exodus 15:25 and 16:4

Given that ‘God tested Abraham’ (Genesis 22:1), it’s perhaps no surprise that Israel follows in the footsteps of their great ancestor in the faith.

In the exodus story, between the crossing of the sea and the arrival at Sinai is a period of about two months during which God provides for the needs of his people in the desert and protects them from threats. Importantly, this is not yet the forty years of wandering in the wilderness that would later come about because of their unwillingness to enter the promised land. In this case, the trek from the sea to Sinai is not a punishment but an opportunity for the people to learn that their ongoing welfare will depend on obedience to and trust in the Lord.

It’s in this sense that the Lord tests his people – not to catch them out or for them to prove they are somehow worthy of his love, but to teach them to ‘pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees’ (15:26). The wilderness becomes a place where God trains them in his ways, shaping them according to his expectations of those who are to be his ‘holy nation’ (19:6), who will represent him to a watching world.

On several occasions, the New Testament describes Israel’s experience in the desert as in some way analogous to the Christian life (1 Corinthians 10:1-11; Hebrews 3:7-4:11). We too find ourselves in a time and place between deliverance from our slavery and arrival at our final destination.

Some circumstances in life provide us with greater opportunities to trust God and his presence with us, his provision for us. Perhaps you’ve been through one or more of those situations already. Perhaps you’re in the middle of one right now. The exodus stories remind us not to judge God’s faithfulness by our circumstances. It’s all too easy for us, as for the exodus generation, to evaluate our situation by what we think is lacking, to forget all that God has already done for us and his promise to keep us.

But more than that: to train us through those moments, to move us to a yet deeper appreciation of his ways. And to do this for us not merely as individuals but as communities of faith, that we may be the people he has called us to be for the sake of the world in which we live.