Rugged. Wild. Far from home.
What’s the farthest you’ve ever been in the wilderness?
My backpacking adventures have taken me to many places that are remote and isolated. I’ve gone days without seeing another soul outside of my backpacking buddy. Been in spots where the nearest “road” (often an old gravel logging trail) was dozens of root-y, rocky miles on foot away.
These trips have shaped me, given me the space and time and silence to uncurl the knots of thoughts that life has built up in my brain and dream and plan and BE.
In another wilderness experience, for two years of my life, I packed up and moved to Idaho. It took 22 hours of driving to get there from my house.
In Idaho, even when you’re in one of their cities, you’re still pretty remote.
There’s not a lot of people in Idaho.
I spent my summers working at Camp Perkins in the Sawtooth mountains. That was its own brand of wilderness. The nearest town is 40 minutes away over an epic mountain pass. The nearest Walmart is 3 hours away.
In those remote rugged mountains I learned what it means to be faithful as a follower of Jesus even when you aren’t surrounded by lots of other Christians and churches and resources. And how to start over somewhere new.
Wilderness transformation is a God thing. Time and again in the Bible we see God drawing people into the wilderness, meeting them there, and sending them out shaped and changed.
• Hagar running and being seen
• Elijah hearing a gentle whisper
• The Israelites wandering the desert
Our modern lives are structured in such a way that the ease and shelter of civilization is never too far from reach.
And that may be good for our comfort, but it’s not so good for our souls.
Time in the wilderness isn’t forever. It’s temporary. But that very aspect makes it so very, very transformational.
That’s one of the things I love about camp ministry.
Camp is time in the wilderness that God uses to shape and transform the people who come. Time at camp is filled with challenge. It’s not always the most comfortable. But when people come away to camp, God meets them here and they return home changed.
In Hebrews, we see one more example of someone traveling into the wilderness.
“The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
I love the picture these verses paint.
Jesus, being thrust outside the city.
Away from comfort. Away from community. Away from home.
But because he traveled away, we were brought near to the God who meets us in the wilderness.
Jesus brought us out of the wilderness and into the comfort of God's grace, truth, and love. Connected us back into the family of God.
And in Jesus, we don’t need to fear the wilderness. Instead we can embrace it, go to places and spaces that challenge and change us, and know that he is with us in it all.
And we can trust that ultimately, our time on earth is its own kind of wilderness.
This isn’t our enduring city.
But we do look for the one to come.
