Tuesday, November 27, 2001
"the voice of one
crying out in the wilderness."
Mark 1:3
One of my favorite places in the world is Iona--a small desolate
island in the Inner Hebrides chain, off the western coast of
Scotland. This rocky, windswept place has few houses, stores,
or people, but lots of sheep, very old rocks, and the ancient
history of being the place where St. Columba arrived to bring
Christianity to this corner of the world in 563AD. About Iona,
it's said to be a place "where the veil between heaven and
earth is thinner." For me, the isolation of this island
is my form of wilderness. Other people may define wilderness
as the Boundary Waters, the Rocky Mountains, the Amazon, and
the outback of Australia--places of escape from the pressures
of everyday life.
From what we can tell, wilderness for John the Baptist might
have been the desert--an uninhabited, dangerous space, a place
of testing. Yet, also a place where God might be found. John
brings a message from God--from the wilderness--to the people.
The message was to repent--to stop and take a look at their lives
and see if they are God-directed, God-connected, or not. And
if they are not, they're to do something about it, turn their
lives around and make changes.
Our modern day life is probably more often like the wilderness
of John the Baptist than it is the wilderness of Iona, or the
mountains or the forests. A world full of greed and gluttony,
wealth and waste, loneliness and hurt, may be a wilderness that
contains voices that lead us away from God. These may be voices,
which seduce us into thinking that the good life is defined by
money, status, power, and the best and the newest of everything.
As we begin to think about decorating for the Christmas season,
I wonder what the newest decoration will be. Remember back a
few years ago, when the icicle lights were brand new and kept
appearing on more and more of the houses in the neighborhoods?
Well, what will it be this year that our consumer culture convinces
us we have to have? A friend of mine reminds me that in the past,
when we decorated for Christmas, we had the practice of simply
using what we had the year before. What a novel idea!
PRAYER: During
this season especially, help us to not get lost in our culture's
wilderness. Help us hear other voices as we await the birth of
the Christ Child in our lives. Amen.
Sue Burwell
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