Pastor Wilber was speaking on Sunday at first service before one of my team members, Reese, took the stage. Along with Robert, another True Vine staff, he hosts us most graciously and came to our rescue when we were stranded at a dangerous border crossing about a week ago which makes me even more inclined to appreciate the man. Anyways, suffice it to say, he is respected amongst our group and this particular sermon aroused my contemplative side. Being entirely African though, he says things like wilderness with the word wild in mind to make the pronunciation, creating a different word all together. Wild        Er          Ness. 

A wilderness is an inhospitable, uninhibited, uncultivated, and neglected place, not somewhere you would go for your honeymoon. The word also refers to a region or spot in its natural state, not yet domesticated. 

So why on earth is God sending his chosen people into an inhospitable, neglected, and frankly wild situation still today? A place where even His servants have trouble hearing His voice or sensing His presence, a place where no one really wants to go because it is not comfortable or pleasurable, a place where things are strange and unusual yet exactly how they are supposed to be.

It's as simple as the chicken crossing the road to get to the other side. Obvious, you would think. Why go to the wilderness? To get more wild. To have a Wilder Ness about you. To go back to the natural way which seems so foreign now. Our relationship with God should be wild, unrestrained. Sometimes, we need to rediscover what we really believe, if our faith stands even when we cannot feel the source of it. The wilderness is such a place to revive our dying souls. God is not a feeling.

I have come to love C.S. Lewis, as previously mentioned on this blog, with a sincere passion. He explains God in ways that I would never have been able to grasp by myself. Let me tell you the supply of these ingenious revelations that I have been having, The Chronicles of Narnia, a child's fantastical collection of novels (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe being the most famous). Phenomenal books.

In the Magician's Nephew, the lion Aslan (God) creates a world which comes to life at the sound of His glorious voice and everything is good. However, much to Aslan's knowledge, evil entered the world quickly after its foundation in the form of a witch accidentally transported in by two children, a crazed old man, a cabby, and the cabby's horse. 

Magic rings that the children had acquired from the boy's uncle (the crazed old man) allowed the kids to pass between worlds along with whatever other living creatures they were in contact with. In an attempt to get the evil witch out of their own world (to which they had also accidentally brought her into on one of their adventures), they used little discretion and ended up in this new world just at the beginning of creation.

The witch recognizing Aslan's superior power ran into the forest to build her strength before her return. Even in the foreknowledge that the evil witch which they led into the world would one day almost destroy it, He gives the humans a solid chance for redemption and the children as well as the cabby and his horse choose to follow that path. The old man, stubborn and unwilling to believe that a lion could talk, much less sing, though the lion sang the world to life right in front of his very eyes, would choose otherwise. 

After a while of choosing not to believe in the lion being anything but an ordinary lion, He stopped being able to hear Aslan's voice and could only distinguish a fierce but animalistic growling. He still revered the lion and feared him, but now without the perk of knowing him.

God will be to you what you make Him to be. If you limit Him long enough, you will lose the ability to see his unlimitlessness. 

The Chronicles of Narnia entreats me to be wild when I get stuck in the wilderness, and what a wonderful idea.