On the edge of wilderness

On the edge of wilderness.

My walking buddy forgot our date this morning, so I headed off round the once-familiar track which has been sadly neglected since Dusty’s demise two years ago tomorrow. (Wow. Two years.) 

I’ve passed that way a few times in the intervening months, but not very regularly and usually with a companion. I notice a lot more when I walk alone.

The logs which were cut months ago still wait to be uplifted, presumably drying but hard to see how in the wet summer weather. Two small hills of asphalt chips which were left over from the road improvement needed to harvest the trees. One giant hill of cow manure – now forgotten by the farmer?

Butterflies abound. The path, pitted with puddles, is losing its definition as fewer people walk that way. The once-well-worn track to the Forest of Endor lies overgrown, abandoned even by the game-keeper who no longer rears pheasants there. 

I loved it. There is something that draws me to wild places, areas ignored and perhaps regarded as wasteland. Living here, surrounded by cultivated fields and busy farmers, yet less than a mile away in two different directions I can be very alone with my Maker. 

Precious.

Come to Me

Jet lag leaves a body weary, sleeping at the wrong time of day, awake when everyone else is sleeping. 

One of our B&B guests told me today that every Monday he experiences ‘van lag’, because he has to rise so early to drive over a hundred miles north to start his working week. Of course he is not crossing time zones but missing hours of refreshing sleep.

It doesn’t take much for a body to grow weary, especially as the years add up. But there is another kind of weariness from which it is harder to bounce back. Soul weariness. Weariness of life itself. It isn’t just us in our modern, high-tech and high-pressured world who feel such weariness; a man called Elijah in the Bible was so tired of being the pariah of Israel, hunted by the Queen herself with an intention of murdering him, that he ran away and languished under a bush in a desert, longing for death. He was weary, world weary.

God knows that some of us are more tried than others. He knows that many have good reason to be world weary. And he offers respite.

Come to me, Jesus invites. All who are weary, and I will give you rest. 

Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, Moses said about the tribe of Benjamin. The one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders. A good vantage point. A safe place. 

It’s hard to see yourself as beloved of anyone, sometimes, let alone of the Lord. Who indeed is good enough to be loved by the Lord of all?

Well, nobody is, but Jesus died for everyone, before they were ‘good enough’. None of us is good enough. But still we are the beloved of the Lord. 

So how do we enter his rest? How do we experience that safe place on the shoulders of the Almighty?

By seeking him in places where he can be found. The Bible. A good church. Christian friends. In the wilderness, along the ocean, on the mountaintop. It may seem, for ages, like there’s nobody there but our imagination. How wrong we are if we stop seeking. We all have further to go, and deeper to go in his rest.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Wherever you are; whatever your circumstances. He hears every voice that calls out to him, the cry of every person who looks for him. 

Come to me, he says, and I will give you rest.

Abundance

There is an abundance of blessing along the paths I tread with Dusty just now. Wild raspberries, small but perfectly formed and sweet, offer their bounty to birds and whatever other scavengers there are around – including me! As Dusty sniffs smells on the ground, I painstakingly pick some of these tiny berries and freeze them for making into jam when I have gathered enough.

A neighbour’s garden is bursting with red and black currants, and as they are temporarily down south, I’m not sure if anyone else is picking or whether I should swoop in and spend a few hours stripping the branches. Will check on that before I go helping myself, but it is sad to see ripe fruit drop to the ground and rot. 

The brambles (blackberries) are forming and will be ready for picking in another month or two. When we first moved here, over thirty years ago, a common road hazard was coming across individuals or couples parked precariously along these narrow lanes while they picked the brambles to use in desserts and jams and jellies. Now nobody picks them but me.

In times of austerity, one would expect more people to avail themselves of the treats which nature offers free of charge. But perhaps everyone is just too busy, or maybe an entire generation has grown up not knowing even what they are.

I didn’t know what they were when we moved here. But others taught me what to do with them, and now it is part of the rhythm of my year. 

All this in-gathering takes time of course. But it is time well-spent.

God says in the Bible, ‘I took care of you in the wilderness, in that dry and thirsty land. But when you had eaten and were satisfied, you became proud, and forgot me.’ (Hosea 13) 

I have been in the wilderness at various times in my life, and I have been aware that God was providing for me. Sometimes it was a spiritual wilderness. Sometimes it was a wilderness of thorny relationships. Sometimes it was a financial wilderness. 

God has consistently provided for me. Like the time required for gathering the wild rasps and brambles, it takes time sitting with him, listening to him, to appreciate just how significant is his daily provision. 

Sometimes, to our shame, we are too busy grafting to take time to appreciate what God is doing, to count our many blessings. We need to take time. To establish a rhythm of listening for God which is as natural as taking the next breath. 

I hate the thought, but recognize the truth, that when we are satisfied, when things are going well for us, it is easy to put it down to our own efforts, to become proud, and to forget what God has done, and what he is doing.

He is a faithful God, who lavishes all of us with good gifts. Even in the barrenness of a wilderness, look out for the wild raspberries. They will be there.