From Wilderness to Hope

Journeying together through Lent – Discovering the promise of resurrection at the heart of human life.

A journey for anyone holds aspects of newness, of anticipation and of uncertainty. We often leave for a trip, a visit or for a holiday break looking forward with the hope of something new, different, exciting or, at least, enjoyable. Some prefer the journeying to the arriving. For some it is the opposite.

Can we use this as an image representing our journey through a day; a week, a year; our lives? Some Christian groups used to teach an arid form of predestination – believing that we had no control over the destiny of our lives. Some were already chosen, it was said, to be saved from the worst by God. Others were unavoidably and inescapably doomed. Not a teaching many could support today. Rather we recognise the complexities of what it is to journey through our human life. We know we need to try to make some sense of this and root ourselves in some structure of truth and a pattern of life to enable us to flourish in good times, to have strength in bad times and to realise that change faces us all.

The journey can take us into places which can seem dark, empty, still and unyielding. It can also renew, re-encourage and reinvigorate. From the wilderness in Judaea to the arid plains of urban, impoverished housing estates; the blowing of the tumbleweed across the plains of glitzy shopping centres to the impoverished desert of the unloving home and the isolated individual. We can all name the darker places of our lives.

But to become people – real people – is to know about these things and to try to respond to them by shaping our lives to bring upon them life and light, love and hope. It is also to recognise that within us lies the wilderness, as much as in others.

The paradox lies in the stepping out – the need to face these things and embrace them in order that we can see that to do so we can, indeed, find something further; something more profound and something ultimately far more real than anything we see in our man-made environment.

Into the wilderness went Jesus – and St Paul, and other saints, monks, hermits, nuns and anchoresses of the past. So too have many in our age. Seeking solitude and space for inner reflection and release from the chains that hold us back or the blinkers which restrict our vision. Into the desert – the unknown place; but a place where we can begin to make space for a love; a reality; a God who says “come” and who says “live”. Who says “drink the water of life” and “eat the living bread”

Our hope may never lie in the bricks and concrete of our buildings or the tokens and paper we call money. Our hope – to be a little bit more the sort of human being to which we can all aspire – is made real by setting out. It is made real by daring to try to live. We may not know what will come next and we may fear the risks but it also allows us to come through the wilderness into hope – to a presence which we can barely express.

So come and walk with us and see what we discover this Lent.

I commend to you our programme of meetings, worship and activities being organised this Lent in the Benefice. I encourage you to take one of the specially produced Lent booklets full of ideas of how to journey this way through Lent with others or alone. You find a copy in any of our Churches.

Harold Stephens, Team Rector