In the Desert with Christ
When Jesus landed
and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep
without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
To be among God’s people, to
earnestly seek after Jesus, is inevitably to find oneself within some desert or
wasteland.
A woman wakes up twenty years into a
marriage, and thinks, “is this it? Really?” She makes the inventory of her life
as a celebrated library, low-level politician. She counts the birthdays of her
children. She remembers that her children now have their own children. Her
husband snores. So does she.
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| Christ the Good Shepherd Third Century |
A man feels the stiffness on his
shoulder, arm, legs, as he goes up for a shot. He knows that this is likely to
be his last basketball game. He remembers once dunking on a professional football
player during a scrimmage in college. Too often, he finds himself starting
sentences with “when I was younger,…” He left leg begins to tingle
unpleasantly, and his bladder leaks just a bit.
A graduate gets drunk and throws The
Master’s Diploma away. This will lead to some regret. It’ll cost $115, plus
shipping and two trips to the university finance department, to get it
replaced. Later, the new diploma is photocopied, which is generally enough
documentation for the kinds of jobs the graduate can apply. Without a PhD.
A young mother listens to her son
cry. There are the funny tantrums, and the embarrassing tantrums, and the “give
me what I want” tantrums. This one is hard to define. At least, it would be
easier if she had space in her brain to think about it, between the school work
and paperwork for her job. The father lives in Alaska. She hopes they will get
married. It has been five years.
We wander, get are hooves stuck in
some deep pits. Our wool gets tangled and matted with twigs and our own shit. The
loads on our backs get heavier and heavier. Cysts start forming on our skin.
Fresh grass doesn’t grow much in the deserts and wastelands. We look bloated;
our stomachs are empty.
Funny thing about sheep: even though
they feel so much better after been shorn, very few sheep with voluntarily come
up to the shearer. This is because to shear a sheep, it needs to be tied down
on a table, and splayed out. To be freed from all the muck and broken bits of
life, the sheep needs to be stripped of everything it can call its own.
Sometimes, the sheep’s fragile skin is cut and bleeds during this process. In
the end, the sheep comes out as white as snow. That kind of white doesn’t come
without a bit of red.
When you find yourself in this kind
of desert, do not shirk the pain. It’s all part of the path. Do pay attention.
Jesus has a habit of making deserts his lecture hall. The first lesson will be:
we are fed when compassion meets faith.
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