Lost in the Desert
It was becoming a hot late summer morning in the Arizona “Valley of the Sun”, and I was trying to stay on a trail near the Superstition Mountains. My goal was to hike into, and up one of the mountains before afternoon. However, being used to hikiing more in areas where there are more trees and bushes, I quickly learned how easy it is to lose track of the trail when there is much less vegetation. This was new terrain for me. Does the trail go right of the sagebruch, or left? It was hard to tell. Sometimes our spiritual life seems just like that. We enter “new terrain” and feel lost or confused.
Some helpful things came to mind on that hike. One, I had to keep my bearings. I knew the Superstition Mountains were west and in front of me, and were the goal of the hike, and the “valley” were I had come from was behind me. Those markers were key and I had to keep them in mind. Another factor was considering where would each direction potentially take me. Did the potential routes of going right or left appear to take me where I hoped to go? If I go the wrong direction, would that put me off track, and even worse, put me in in a situation where I am lost and alone in the blazing afternoon heat. Finally, I had to look for more finite details in the immediate surroundings, namely footprints or cairns (stacks of rocks left as trail markers). Which of those may be there to help me see where others had gone before me.
As I look back at that “adventure”, and all that took place then, I find similarities with the current context of my life. I am in a new “environment”, with a destination in front of me, but a definite lack of certainty of how to get there.
So I need to apply the same principles. Where am I on the map? What is in front of me? Behind me? My context?
Where would various “directions” take me? Would I get where I hope to go? Would the wrong path put me and those close to me in unnecessary “danger”?
What “markers” have been left by others? As a Christian, much of this means looking not just at those in my immediate context, but more importantly at the “Ancient Paths” of Scripture, and of Christians throughout history who have traversed challening circumstances. What was their mindset? How did their faith in Christ sustain them? How did they discern and make decisions in their particular situations?
Years later I would encounter similar hiking challenges in other environments, namely snow-covered ones (those stories for another day), but the same principles applied. I doubt my current challenge will not be my last either.