The
wilderness is a place of prayer.
By
the time Jesus heads into the wilderness, a thousand years, give or take, after
David, the wild places have been plundered for their timber. No-one would
appreciate this more than a carpenter, a labourer in the construction industry,
the work of whose hands in a very literal sense extends civilisation at the
cost of the wilderness. Again, civilisation – external and internal – is not
bad per se, but has a cost – and must
have its limits.
[As
an aside, I have a couple of hunches about prayer: that many people feel
inadequate at prayer, believing that they are better-able to serve in some
other more practical way; and that often, people come to prayer later in life,
as their capacity to serve in other ways diminishes. As I say, these are
hunches. They are based on anecdotal evidence, untested observation. But if
they were in any way close to the mark, this might suggest a correlation
between prayer and the wilderness.]
At
first glance, the wilderness is a lifeless place. Look again, more closely, and
you discover that it is full of plants and animals that have adapted in order
to make this place their home. From a scientific viewpoint, this can be
described as evolution (and from a theological perspective, evolution describes
how life has responded to God’s invitation to be fruitful and fill the earth,
every habitat). From a theological viewpoint, the same adaptation can be
described as every living thing looking to God, and receiving all its needs
from God’s hand. In short, the desert lizard, the ibex, the jackal, at prayer.
It
is into the wilderness that the Holy Spirit leads – or even drives, with urgency – Jesus, that he
might pray with the wild animals. That he might learn from them, at home in
their dependence on God.
How,
then, do the wild things pray?
As
the family of all the living;
the
wilderness displaying God’s glory;
life
willing to flourish in a fragile
ecosystem, to be fruitful and fill the earth;
with
an awareness of their physical needs;
aware,
also, that to eat in order to live has inevitable cost, but taking only what is
needed, the food chain being part of the delicate balance of interdependence;
in
a shrinking ecological footprint where resources are reduced and life squeezed
by the actions of others.
That
is, the wild things pray: Our Father in
heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as
in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, as we
forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver
us from evil.
What
does it look like to pray from within our wild places? Really, to deny our
self-sufficiency and to repent of – to turn away from, to head in a different
direction – competing with one another in order to satisfy our desires.
But
how might we pray in the wilderness, where we are confronted with our inability
to do anything, including prayer?
Wilderness prayer is simply being
before God, perhaps even wordless like the wild animals; finding ourselves in a
place where God searches us out and finds us in his love for all that he has
made.
In
the wilderness, Jesus wrestles with the temptation to provide his own daily
bread; to claim the pinnacle of human achievement, in cultural grandeur and
societal power; and to embrace an all-encompassing civilisation that imposes
itself on the wilderness, crushing all non-conformity. The wilderness stands as
a testimony against such glittering folly. Far
from judgement passed on a failed or failing life, our wild within is a
precious gift. Perhaps it is only from that wilderness that we can resist
what would ensnare us. Perhaps that is why the Holy Spirit drives Jesus into
the wilderness. Perhaps that is why we follow.
Today
parts of what remain of the Judean wilderness are protected as National Parks.
Might we learn also to protect and value our internal wilderness?
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