The Searcher

"God's preacher-prophet-watchperson must be aware that lonliness comes with the territory. In fact, the watchperson, is in a perpetually lonely situation, for a watchtower cannot hold a crowd. -Beecher Hicks Jr.

Life in the desert has a way of having its way with you. You can watch the world from a lonely hilltop or in the darkness of night stare at the sliver of the moon. Watching and waiting generally proves frustrating. Maybe that is why one is prone to wander. Follow old trails, visit old haunts explore uncharted canyons hidden within the desert lanscape. There is an internal desire to be lost, all but forgotten; killed by indians, mortally injured by a careless fall, a water hole run dry. A lot can happen to a man in the desert. Is he not just one more soul lost to civilization?

I have wondered about Paul, lashed to the mast on his journey towards Rome. He stared up at the same sliver of moon comtemplating hopes and dreams and dreading warnings unbidden. With the smell of winter in the air and oracles which fell on deaf ears, the sea of glass became white caps with the coming of November. She shuddered with her belly and heaved within her hull. Taste the spray and ride the rage to a bitter shore.

"I wonder as I wander out under the sky.........."
"Lonliness for the preacher-watchman is most striking because it is most internal. This lonliness is one that friends can not erase and for which congregational families can not compensate. It is a kind of existential lonliness coming in the darkest part of the night and forcing us to meet the ambiguities of life. To struggle with the self that can not be expressed is to be lonely. To struggle with the tension of calling and purpose, knowing all the while that what you wish to be is at odds with what God requires you to become, is to be lonely. To stand in that strange and eerie place where you used to hear from God, where he used to show up but now is undeniably absent and silent, is to be lonely. So then, it apprears that because I have this calling and this vision, I am condemned to be lonely- believing, at the same time, that by God's promise I am never alone. It is the very essence of faith. It is a conundrum." (Beecher HIcks)

And so the desert wanderer presses on. In search of? Only God knows what. Perhaps more appropriately, who he searches for. There on the mountain, in the cloud. A place of unknowing, where for Moses the mysteries of heaven were unlocked. The place where for Moses life must have at times become exceedingly tedious. Waiting for wanderers to become worshippers. Sola Fide, WHB