The Way Home

I needed to get home on that snowy, windy night. The winter wind was blowing pretty hard and it was cutting interesting formations in the snow along the side of the road. I glanced across a farmer's field. Two months ago, the land was waiting for a farmer's combine and now the once productive field had been transformed into a snow-white desert as the cold, north wind created small mounds of dry, blowing snow. At times I wondered if I was actually on the road or at the very least, the correct side of the road. The blowing snow and dark night made it difficult to know for sure where the road was under the weight of my moving car. I was grateful that I had traveled this road many, many times before and had a pretty good idea as to the bends and turns of this road. As I traveled slowly and cautiously through this winter wonderland, my mind recalled the words from the prophet Isaiah:

"A voice of one calling in the desert prepare the way for the Lord, make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God."
Isaiah 40:3

I thought how frightening and perfectly awful it would be to have car trouble on this cold and wintry night and how much worse it would be if I were traveling in a place that was not so familiar to me. It was like a wilderness, a desert place, a place of gnashing and chattering teeth. Yet, there was a beauty about this night that reflected the awesome power of God. I kept traveling through the wilderness. I was on my way home and my memory of the road, the landscape, the familiar buildings were signs to me that I was on the right track.

John the Baptist lived in the wilderness and preached. The people came to hear him preach, they came to see where God resides. After Jesus was baptized by John, he went into the wilderness and saw the face of God. There are countless mystics throughout the generations that have lived in the wilderness where they have known God. The voice of the one calls us out of the world and into the wilderness where God dwells -- in the empty places, the wild places, the places we least expect to find a comforting word. The voice of the prophet from the lonely and desolate wilderness calls through the wind and the snow and invites us home.

The snowy, windy night was not a night I would choose to be on the roads. But even in the wind, the snow, and the ice, the grace of God could be seen. Along the road I was traveling, I could still follow a trail that would lead me home. Perhaps it was a night to experience God in the wilderness, the place where we are least equipped to survive and are the most dependent upon the grace of God. Maybe the cry from the wilderness is an invitation to come into the desert, the empty place, the wild place and discover the place where God dwells. Perhaps this IS THE WAY home -- through the wilderness.

As I babble on about snowy nights, empty places and a voice that calls us into the wilderness, I begin to see that the chaos of blowing snow on a cold and windy night is much like living this life. This life that is so unpredictable, often menacing, at times lonely and cold and other times beautiful and timeless. Yet, even in in the storms of life , one can follow a faint trail that leads us home -- home to the voice that calls us into the desert and shows us the way home.