In the Desert...You Can't Remember Your Name

Today’s rambling may be completely random…I have three strands of thought in my head that I hope I can cause to converge in my thought process to make a complete puzzle…so hang on while I try to put the pieces together…

I LOVE the biblical story of the exodus of God’s people from Egypt—but for ALL the wrong reasons.  The “good stuff” is all sort of “self-evident”…it is like a child’s flannel graph story from Sunday School in the 1970’s…it is hard to miss the point—God at work in the lives of His chosen people—He is faithful even when we aren’t.  The narrative of promise and the theology are all there…but it is the geographic content that intrigues me, and for that we need to step back a little further.

I’ve never been to the “Holy Land” but I have seen pictures, videos, and I talked with several people who have witnessed it first-hand.  Parts of it seem quite beautiful (even though it has been war-torn nearly since Jesus left the earth) but there is a stark contrast to the beauty—the barrenness of the desert (also called “wilderness”). The Hebrew can be translated as “desert” or “barren wilderness”…no words better describes MOST of my spiritual life than these.

Since the time I felt called by God to enter the ministry I have always sought God’s leading.  Often I felt clear direction and sensed the Spirit’s prompting for me to make certain choices—and CLEARLY they have been just that…MY CHOICES.  I am not a Calvinist and do not believe in deterministic predestination—I fully believe that God has an overall plan but gives us free will to make choices, and I have always thought that I have tried to see God’s plan and make choices that aligned my will with God’s will—obviously I have not always been successful at that (at least from my perspective)—so I feel like I have spent my life “wandering in the wilderness” (a good spiritual metaphor for me).  I have always believed that God was with me in my wandering (and even in the wilderness) but I have often felt exiled NOT because of God but because I was bearing the responsibility of MY choices (Sartre would be proud of my existentialist leanings here…taking the responsibility for both my choice AND what I didn’t choose!).  Too often my self-imposed exile left scars.

Last week I was listening online to a streaming audio sermon by Mike Breaux.  It was an okay message (long on pop/socio psychology and short on theology grounded in Scripture for me but that is a WHOLE other issue) but he was talking about Moses when he said a phrase that has been stuck in my head.  He spoke about Moses killing the Egyptian taskmaster and then fleeing to the desert for safety.  He went on to tell how Moses stayed in the desert, and then he said this, “Moses was in the desert and the desert was in him.”  It was the Fred Craddock moment of the sermon…it was not his main point but it was so powerfully worded that it was impossible to miss!  This was the epitaph for my own life.  Please note, God was still with Moses in the desert (even though he was now a murderer—for ALL the right reasons—but a murderer all the same)…I suspect He was waiting…for Moses to dissipate and for the desert to set in.

It is the nature of sin in our lives.  It is the effect that it has on our souls.  I am reminded of two powerful scenes from the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.  Both scenes are prompted by the power that the ring (the symbol of evil) has over the  “ring-bearer” (and btw remember Galadriel’s words to Frodo: “to be a ring-bearer is to be alone”).  The first is the opening sequence of the movie that shows what happens to Sméagol and Déagol the day Déagol finds the ring.  Sméagol kills his friend to gain “ownership” of the ring, and then:

They cursed us. Murderer. Murderer they called us. They cursed us and drove us away. And we wept, Precious, we wept to be so alone. And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind . . . We even forgot our own name…

The second is near the end of the movie.  Frodo and Sam are near the top of Mt Doom (where the ring is to be destroyed) and they are exhausted from their long journey…Sam ponders the future:

Sam: Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?

Frodo: No, Sam. I can't recall the taste of food... nor the sound of water... nor the touch of grass…

It is what happens when the desert overcomes us…we forget!  I have been accused of being unsympathetic, introverted, and distant (even though I don’t think I am—it could be a by-product of my too modernistic rational theological education), but I am NEVER unmoved by those who suffer debilitating neurological disorders…who “forget” to eat, to communicate, loved ones, their name…themselves. 

We are, in part, who we are because of our names (though we can legally change them—we cannot change the genetics behind those names). Names are important.  My wife and I went to great lengths to make sure that the names of our children told their stories…and as they shape their own stories growing up—their names are helping to shape them serving as reminders of what our (my wife and I) visions, hopes, and dreams, were of them and for them.

When I was younger I was learning to play the acoustic guitar…and though I wanted to ROCK…I began with easy folk and country songs. But what I wanted to play was those “soft-rock/folk-rock” songs of the 70’s…one of the first ones I tried to play was “A Horse with No Name” by the group America (man am I getting old!!)…I have always tried to figure out just what that song was about---and I have read MANY explanations (none completely satisfied me) but I have always been struck with the phrase, “in the desert, you can’t remember your name…”—whatever they meant they understand how the desert gets in us..and we forget.

I’ve been there.  I am there.  I have been lost and disoriented but I have never been alone.  The desert has consumed me…it lives in me…I am dry, and barren inside and out, and yet I have never felt completely alone nor devoid of hope (though it has often dimmed!).  One reason is because I know that I have been sustained by those who love me, even when I am unlovely—they have prayed when I could not, they have gone when I decided to stay, they cared when I didn’t, and they stayed strong when I was weak.  And somehow when I don’t want Him or when I least expect him…God shows up and reminds me that I have a new name…Christian…and even when I forget…He doesn’t.

So once again I find myself at a crossroads.  Just when I thought a break from ministry was immanent…God seemingly has other plans…plans that only He could have orchestrated.  So I will do my best to follow—knowing that trying to do it on my own will only end in failure but recognizing that my failure is His specialty…because when I am weak HE IS STRONG.  I believe…help my unbelief.