Into the wilderness
The great and terrible wilderness
The break is behind them now. Egypt is on the far side of a sea that has already closed, and ahead lies what Deuteronomy will not dress up: the great and terrible wilderness, fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there is no water. This is the second phase, and it has its own weather. The old life is gone and the new land is not yet given, and in between stretches a country with no roads, where the familiar landmarks have all dropped below the horizon and the new ones have not risen. Bearings are simply lost. The map that worked in Egypt is useless here, and there is no map for here. What makes the wilderness so disorienting is precisely that it is neither the bondage left nor the promise ahead; it is the long, trackless middle. And yet, generations later, the LORD will remember this very stretch of sand with something close to tenderness, recalling how His people once followed Him into a land that was not sown. The wilderness was real. So was the One walking ahead of them in it.
“I remember for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your weddings; how you went after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.”
— The LORD, through Jeremiah — Jeremiah 2:2 (WEB)
“Who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions, and thirsty ground where there was no water.”
This is Disorientation, the second phase: the wilderness between the old life left behind and the new not yet given. It asks you to recognize where you are. The bearings are gone and the old map is useless, and that is the nature of this country, not a sign you have failed. It is a phase to cross, not a verdict to accept.
You have left the old life behind, but you have not yet arrived, and the in-between is meant to feel exactly like this. The certainties that once held you do not work here, and the new ones have not formed; the map that fit your old country is useless, and no map for here has been drawn. You may be standing in exactly this country: out of the old life, not yet into the new, with every familiar bearing gone and nothing solid risen to replace it.
To decide that because you cannot find your footing, you must have lost your faith; that because the old certainties no longer work, something has gone wrong with you. The wilderness says otherwise. But losing your bearings is not the same as losing your way. Do not mistake the trackless middle for God's absence. This is a phase, not a sentence, a country to be crossed and not a confession of failure. The disorientation is honest, and you do not have to pretend it away or rush yourself out of it. But neither is it the end of the story or the proof of abandonment.
The same God who led His people into the trackless middle remembered it afterward as the season of their first love. He is not absent from your wilderness. He is the One who led you into it, and He intends to lead you through.
When the Church passes from one era into the next, it enters the same trackless country: the old forms no longer fitting, the new ones not yet clear, and many within it convinced the bewilderment can only mean ruin. The recurring upheaval Phyllis Tickle traced, roughly every five hundred years, is precisely this kind of crossing, when the inherited shape of the faith loosens before its next shape is given. It feels like wreckage from inside. Yet the LORD once led His whole people through exactly such a wilderness and remembered it afterward as the season of their first love. The disorientation of the Church in transition is the route, not the ruin, and the God walking ahead of His people has not lost the way.
When every bearing is gone, what cannot be shaken is the One who led you into the wilderness and walks ahead of you in it. The landmarks fall away; His presence does not. What remains when the map is useless is the Guide who needs no map.
- Where have I been reading my disorientation as a verdict on my faith rather than as a phase to cross?
- What old map am I still trying to use in a country it was never drawn for?
- Can I believe that the God who led me into this wilderness has not left me in it?
Lord, I am out of the old life and not yet into the new, and I have lost my bearings in between. Let me not mistake this wilderness for Your absence or my failure. You led me here; lead me through. Walk ahead of me where I can find no road. Amen.