From Wannabe to Welcome Wilderness

​

​

 

After forty something years of wandering around in WannaBe Wilderness, I’m settling into the Promised Land.  I still have holes in my heart waiting to be filled, books that are written but lacking a publisher, questions and dreams that are out of my reach, but now…. they no longer have me.  I am learning that the way to get the most out of this life, is to focus on the next life, and understand that this life is just a stepping stone.    

 

Some mornings I still wake up unsettled, on the edge, wishing I had more control over what I think I can control as well what I know I can’t.  On better mornings I wake up and I let go of the idea that I’m in control and that I shape my own destiny, and I acknowledge the One who is in control and avail myself to the beautiful thing we call grace.  I find joy these mornings, mornings I wake up not with feelings of completeness and accomplished, but with the realization of how desperate I am for God to help me through each moment of this life and to carry me to the next.  I love life, I love my family, my friends, my freedoms, and the good, simple, and wholesome pleasures this life can offer.  But more than loving and embracing these things, on these mornings I love God, and I embrace the gift of Jesus, and the power of The Almighty with all He gives and allows to be taken away.  On these mornings, by default, I care less about how this life turns out and more about how Eternity will.  Paradoxically, learning to embrace the eternal, the immortal, and the invisible, enables me to more fully feel, hold, see, taste and enjoy the earthly things that while good, will never last.  It enables me to let go of all that I can’t control but wish I could, sin and sadness, death and brokenness, all that’s resulted from the fall of man, because there is coming a day for the Believer when the One who is in control will destroy these things.  

 

This life is a stepping stone for the Christian, a stepping stone to the better life to come.  I was made for more than just embracing the good in this life, I was made to embrace the One who gives it.  If I want to get the most out of this life I’ve been given, I must follow the lead of the One who designed it and gives it to me.  Do I plan to trust and do I trust His plan?  The true Promised Land is yet to come, but in another sense His presence is here and as we walk in His Presence we can feast as if we have already arrived.  We live on earth and it is a wilderness, yet we live in His Presence so it’s a glorious wilderness at that.  May His presence be closer than each heartbeat and may I wander with wonder from now through eternity.

 

“Your way, O God, is holy.  What god is great like our God?  You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples.”   Psalm 77:13,14 (ESV)​
                             

​