The Wilderness

 Exodus 17:1-7

Is God among us or not? It seems to be our first question when we are in a tragedy. We go to the fact we reach for as a truth. God is not here, God is not among us, if God were these bad things wouldn't happen. Right now during this pandemic it might seem to help us cope with being masked, isolated, cut off from all which is familiar. This is our wilderness.

We like to think of the wilderness as this place which we romanticize during lent. It's not near us, it is imagined into smaller components. Now we are in a wilderness and just like the Hebrew people we complain. "We want things as they used to be", "I hate being cut off from communion." "I want to worship in the church." "Doesn't the pastor, priest, bishop know what they are doing to us?" It's all someone else's fault for keeping us cut off. We like to blame something and right now it happens to be the persons closest to our spiritual care. 

What would it look like to live into this wilderness? What if we trusted for God's provision? This is the Exodus story. The Hebrew people make it to the Red Sea and see the army coming to kill them, why did you take us away from there Moses? This won't be the only time: food, meat, water all these things time and again they complain and the resounding chorus should haunt us. We would have been better off in Egypt where we had food, water, meat. So Moses lifts up the cry and God provides. Each and every time.

Where is our provision? This week for me it was in two days of Zoom Convocation from my seminary (now closed), The BTS Center. We were provisioned as well. Gifts, little brown paper surprises for certain sessions. We opened little by little, but the feeding was wondrous. Good presenters, deep thinking, beautiful voices raised to make us think. To give us this space of rest and connection, a place to sing and be with God. Yes, even to sing, on mute and join in with the presenter who led us. I've gotten to Saturday night wondering why I was not tired after two days on the computer, why I felt I had encountered this pocket of well-being. It's because I found the oasis in the wilderness, my provision and was connected to this deeply.

We are in the wilderness, we are not left unprovisioned. Our complaints reach the ears of heaven and we have to look around and find the gift. The Hebrew people had to collect the manna each week, it wasn't left at their door step. They had to gather the quail, kill, pluck, cook, they weren't already prepared and at the tent flap. They had to wander and find these well-springs of water, they weren't obvious saying X marks the spot or told from the GPS you have reached your destination. God provides and it is our job to recognize the provision.

So maybe the next time you hear yourself asking "When can we be in the building again?", or "I miss communion", or "Does the insert one-in-charge know what they are doing to us?". Maybe you can start to catch yourself and look around for the provisions God is giving already. We worship online, praise God we are provided for worship in this way. We are given new liturgy to express our sorrow in being apart, praise God we can express this. We are trying our best given the current conditions. 

We love our neighbor and so we can't come together as we would like. The pretty things are missing. We are set adrift in a wilderness of our own making. Things have been too easily eased for us in the past. We are set to wander the desert places. Where we find God is essential to our continued well-being. Look for God in the presents laid along the way, to provide for us. Because we are loved, because God is present, because we were never promised an easy road, only the road which leads us to God.