“Sortie”
What to do in Lent 2013?
Yes, updating one’s theology might be the beginning of a journey into the unknown with God’s Spirit.
The Gospel of Luke contains a story about Jesus being driven into the wilderness by “The Spirit” (Luke 4: 1 – 13).
Bruce Sanguin writes that:
“At a psychological and spiritual level, wilderness is the psychic space in which transformation occurs. It is the harsh and often chaotic landscape that a soul must inhabit to undergo spiritual evolution. Wilderness is where we’ll find hope. For Jesus to evolve into the person God intended him to be, and for Jesus to be able to embrace his mission, it was necessary for him to inhabit both dimensions of wilderness(the physical dimension and the spiritual dimension). The wilderness is also where the Spirit is driving us today.”*
Updating one’s theology may mean entering an unknown space, but having the faith to undertake the journey. Am I, are we, being “driven” by the Spirit into the wilderness?
There is a prayer in the hymn book of the United Church of Canada that addresses the issue of entering the unknown. It is something like what follows:
Eternal God,
you call us to ventures of which we cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untravelled,
and through perils unknown.
Give us faith, we pray,
so that we may go forward with courage,
not knowing exactly where we are going,
but also knowing that your hand is leading us,
and your love surrounds us,
through Jesus, the Christ. Amen!
* Bruce Sanguin, Darwin, Divinity, and the Dance of the Cosmos, page 30
allanbaker 