Wilderness Wanderings
Welcome to the Wilderness.
In a year marked by mourning, OneStory continues to bring one unexpected grace after another for Nicole and me.
One of those graces has been the Lord’s invitation to meet Him in the stories of the Scriptures we are writing about. In many ways, I've been hiding out in them.
And you know what? They make really good hide-outs.
These rich repositories of rest reveal who God is. They reveal His compassion, His faithfulness, His wisdom. All in the midst of a disordered world.
And yet I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of their richness. One reason for this is that they all very intentionally link back to stories in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (aka The Torah) in ways that are downright exquisite.
Setting Out for Sinai
We often translate Torah as "law" but it is better understood as “instruction for wisdom.” I'm particularly fascinated by its origins as a word related to both the flow of water and the aiming of an arrow. And the Book of Psalms begins by poetically connecting the Garden of Eden with chewing on this wisdom day and night.
While most of the Torah stories are found within Genesis, the bulk of Torah is set at Mt. Sinai. And Sinai happens to be where I’m at in writing our Teach Us To Pray curriculum right now.
So this week, I set out for Sinai with my marked-up copy of Carmen Joy Imes' Bearing God's Name as my tour guide.
Dr. Imes emphasizes that "whatever Sinai represents, it cannot be a prerequisite for salvation. Israel has already been delivered when they arrive."
In addition to delivering them from slavery, Yahweh has delivered them from hunger, thirst, and the Amalekites. I read these accounts yesterday morning. They are stunning. And He is laying a foundation which He will mirror on the other side of Sinai.
So what do they arrive at? They arrive at a place of transition. A place of becoming. A place of invitation.
I think a lot of us have found ourselves in places of transition this past year and a half. Dr. Imes recognizes them as "liminal spaces." A liminal space is a threshold - a place of being neither here nor there.
And the Hebrews are terrified by the threshold that is the Wilderness of Sinai. After everything they have experienced, they want to return to Egypt.
Dr. Imes writes, "If this response surprises us, it's because we underestimate the disorienting effect of liminal spaces and because we overestimate our own stability."
But Yahweh isn't taking them back to Egypt.
And y'all, He isn't taking us back to 2019.
If we have survived the past two years - within the context of the jarring realization that millions of us on this planet haven't - He's been inviting us to learn to trust Him in a disorientating, unstable space.
But like the intricacy of the stories of Scripture, if we look at our own stories in isolation, we are going to miss what God is inviting us into.
Ultimately - like Psalms suggests - He is inviting us back into a renewed, expanded Garden of Eden. And this invitation is interwoven throughout the entirety of Scripture.
Yes, there are even gifts of Eden in the Wilderness.
If you've been feeling stuck, here is an invitation to reframe the stuck-ness.
I'll be sharing my Wilderness meditations over the coming weeks. I'd love to hear yours as well.
What has this Wilderness season been like for you? How has the Lord met you? Click the “leave a comment” button to let us know.
With grace and peace,
Amber
P.S. I highly recommend Bearing God’s Name by Carmen Joy Imes. It is a very readable version of her PhD dissertation. I’ll be sharing more from it in future posts, but you can get your own copy of Bearing God’s Name at https://www.ivpress.com/bearing-god-s-name
