I’m staying in a little cabin called Serenity at a retreat center in eastern Nebraska near the Platte River as I write this on Monday.
I slipped outside this morning with my Bible because it would seem like a crime to read indoors when you are surrounded by all this beauty.
An unlit fire pit filled with chopped wood sits at my feet. An all-yellow butterfly flitters about. Birds call to one another. And a green bug – I’m going to say it was a spider – just raced across my right arm. I can’t say with any certainty that it was a spider, though, because I didn’t allow him to take up residence on my arm for long. RIP green spider-thingy. Once you enter the no-crawl zone, you get shot down without warning. Those are the rules of bug warfare.
A red and black hammock rocks in the breeze in front of me. I wouldn’t attempt to climb into that thing if they comped my stay. Visions of doing a 180-degree spin and being vomited onto the ground come to mind. But I’ll snap a picture of the hammock from a distance and call it good.
The hum of my air conditioner in my nearby cabin will tell you I’m not exactly roughing it. But the shower experience wasn’t five-star either. It’s impossible to find the warm setting. You either have to take the polar plunge or have your skin melted off. Just when I thought I had defied all the odds this morning, skin-melting mode deployed.
I read a couple of chapters from the Gospel of Luke while taking in all the sights and sounds outside my cabin. Two passages gave me pause. Luke 1:80 (NLT) says, “John [the Baptist] grew up and became strong in spirit. And he lived in the wilderness until he began his public ministry to Israel.” And Luke 3:2 says, “At this time a message from God came to John son of Zechariah, who was living in the wilderness.”
My first question was, why was he living in the wilderness? Who chooses to take scalding hot showers, smash green spiders on their arms or brave hammocks that are sure to spit you onto the ground?
Of course, not everyone has a choice.
Elijah didn’t. 1 Kings 19:4 says, “Then [Elijah] he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.’” For context, he was on the run from Jezebel who had promised to kill him.
David spent his fair share of time in the wilderness on the run for his life too. And Israel ended up there for forty years en route to the Promised Land.
Jesus, however, often intentionally withdrew to the wilderness to pray.
If we don’t choose the wilderness, it usually chooses us.
As for my original question about why John lived in the wilderness? Isaiah 40:3 clears that up. Long before John was born, Isaiah prophesied this about him: “Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, ‘Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God!’”
Likewise, God’s people seem to be destined for the wilderness – in a literal or figurative sense – where everything is stripped away. It’s a place of refinement and/or connection, but it’s inevitable. We either choose it or it chooses us. We seek God or he seeks us. He loves us too much to allow us to stay inside our cabins.
