Worship in the Wilderness

There are some sounds that are just wonderful to wake up to. The sound of the ocean is one of my favorite sounds to wake up to, one week every year I get to wake up to that sound, and there have been some years where we’ve debated on going to the beach, we didn’t have enough money, Dave Ramsey would have said don’t go, but I think that there are some places that fills your soul and does good for you, and the ocean is one of those places for me. Or how about waking up to the sound of hearing, “Wake up baby, I cooked you breakfast”- that’s a good one to wake up to!

But most often, we wake up to the sound of a ringing alarm clock. And then it’s off to the races! Work, school, eat, try to get some things done at home, sleep, then do it all over again.

How can we ever find silence and solitude in our lives? We can’t find it. We have to make it.

I believe we have to be intentional about this because it’s not natural to us. We tend to fill all the empty spaces with something and the silent places with noise.

When we get home we turn on the TV, when we get in the car we turn on the radio, when someone is hurting we feel the need to offer words to fill up the quiet space because silence has become for us, uncomfortable.

And from the life of Jesus we have several times where we are told that Jesus got away by himself to pray. Here’s one of them:

“But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places (other translations read “deserted places” or “the wilderness”) and prayed.” (Luke 5:16)

We think of silence as just being the absence of noise.

Silence isn’t always quiet. It is in the silence of worship where we can pray without words, especially when we don’t know what words to say, let alone what words to pray. And it is there in this silence of worship where our spirits cry out to our God, sometimes in silence, sometimes in groans that words can not express, and our God who we are in communion with hears our prayers.

We can withdraw to pray in a lonely place without being alone.

We can withdraw to pray in a deserted place without being abandoned.

And we can withdraw to the wilderness to pray.

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil” (Luke 4:1-2a)

This passage is important to us in this 40 day season of Lent. These 40 days where we are fasting ourselves, where are seeking God’s voice in our own lives.

Jesus began in the wilderness, and in a spiritual way so do we.

The wilderness is a place we want to leave and get out of. But the wilderness can be a place of learning about God, the wilderness can be a place of leaning on God, the wilderness can be a place of realizing the love of God.

A wilderness of learning, leaning, loving, and then leaving.

And maybe it’s in the silence and solitude that we experience God in the silence of worship. And if God is in the silence of worship, if God is in the still small voice, if God is in the sound of sheer silence, then maybe there can be worship in the wilderness.

Maybe the wilderness times of our lives are not meant to be hurried through, as much as we want to get out of them, maybe in the wilderness we can still worship.

Just as Jesus did, by withdrawing to be alone with God.

And I pray that this week you create times to experience the presence of God in silence and solitude.