Exploring your own Wilderness

Exploring our own Wilderness

Unless we are already standing in God’s presence we still are in a wilderness that presents a wide open essence of the mystery of God.  We can wake up in a mist of confusion and walk towards the emptiness that confronts more than one person in life.  Yet, this is the starting point we either are just beginning or the middle of a shroud that has covered our sense of discernment that awaits our quest.

Living in today’s questionable reasons for the purpose God has selected each of us to perform is not a mystery of itself, but a search to uncover the very giftedness he has given to us.  Is there any rhyme without reason to the hidden answers that we are searching for when we do not even know where we are?  This wilderness is a collection of untold mysteries that seem to be lurking just around the corner but do not expose their covering before us.

The next question any one of us may ask is; “what am I doing here and what has happened to the intellect I employed that now is a past existence in my mind?  Where, I may inquire, is the answer to wisdom that seems to have eluded me?  Therefore, my search must begin with the wisdom that is God who is leading my empty being towards a fulfillment to my soul.

Our search must begin with Wisdom that is the very basis of God, from the beginning of humanity to its ultimate ending with its conclusion of eternal existence with God.  It is essential that we first look at Wisdom in its fullness to get a glimpse of what it is as God’s companion.

“But the souls of the just are in the hands of God, and no torment shall touch them.  They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction.  But they're at peace.  For if before men, indeed, they be punished, yet is their hope full of immortality; Chastised a little, they shall be greatly blessed, because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.  As gold in the furnace, he proved them, and as sacrificial offerings he took them to himself.”   “Those who trust in him shall understand truth, and the faithful shall abide with him in love: Because grace and mercy are with his holy ones, and his care is with his elect.”  (Wis 3: 1-6, 9). 

Wisdom of God is always by his side.  “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth, established the heavens by understanding; By his knowledge the depths break open, and the clouds drop down dew.  God’s creation testifies to his attributes, and the way the world is ordered is evidence of God’s Wisdom.”  (Prv 3: 16 - 20).

What now, as we step into a shrouded existence with nowhere to go or understand?  It is the wisdom that unfolds before us and the hope that the Holy Spirit enters into our psyche with God’s hands upon any hopelessness that has become our companion.  Therefore, do not let this journey into your wilderness become an eternal doubt of your mission, but a walk out of confusion into an opening of the riches that await our trek with God and his wealth of peace and guidance towards our giftedness. 

Ralph B. Hathaway