\n<\/p>\n
In my journey of faith, if I\u2019m honest, I\u2019ve always wanted to get somewhere. As a teenager, I thought I had God figured out. Sure, I could continue to grow in my understanding of God but all the major puzzle pieces were in place and no tectonic shifts were going to take place. That felt like a destination, like I had arrived. And boy did it feel good.<\/p>\n
Once I had to let go of things like inerrancy, a literal reading of Genesis 1-3, and a moralistic reading of the Bible<\/a>, it felt like a free fall.<\/p>\n And believe me, I had to let those things go. I didn\u2019t want And so, I quickly went to work building toward a new destination. Maybe the faith tradition of my youth wasn\u2019t right, but that just meant I needed to pick myself up by my biblical bootstraps and get to work finding out what was<\/em><\/strong> the right way. But every time I felt like I had arrived, new holes would develop and the ship would start sinking again. The questions were getting more unanswerable and the certainty<\/a> I once felt, more elusive. <\/p>\n Let\u2019s take a step back. Like way back to the beginning of God calls Israel out of Egypt and marches them to the It\u2019s utopia.<\/p>\n The challenge of course, is that if you keep reading in the Enter Walter Brueggemann\u2019s book Journey to the Common Good<\/em>.<\/p>\n He brilliantly points out that Israel escapes oppression in This book helped me to see that arriving at a destination is what we<\/em><\/strong> want because certainty and security provide safety for us. But in the history of certainty and security, rarely does it bode well for other people. <\/p>\n Once we feel like we \u201chave it,\u201d once we feel we understand And so, I have begun to think that the best place for me, and for the other people I interact with, is the desert. <\/p>\n And accepting that not only is that inevitable as a human being with limited understanding, but it\u2019s also preferred to keep me in the most open and loving place I can be, without the need to defend my territory, my castle of safety I had built for myself.<\/p>\n We all know the best place to be isn\u2019t in Egypt. But perhaps
\nto. Based on all that I had learned, those things were just no longer tenable
\nfor me, no longer compelling. And I grieved the loss. The loss of feeling
\nsecure. The loss of feeling in control. The loss of feeling like I had arrived.<\/p>\n
\nIsrael\u2019s story. According to the biblical account, Israel was called out of
\nslavery and oppression to set up a new social order where through the
\nIsraelites all the families of the earth would be blessed<\/em><\/strong> (Gen 12:2;
\n28:13-14).<\/p>\n
\nPromised Land, which was described as \u201ca land flowing with milk & honey\u201d
\nand a place where God will see Israel as a treasured possession and will give
\nIsrael \u201cpraise, fame, and high honor\u201d (Deut 26:18-19)<\/p>\n
\nstory, it\u2019s never utopia. The vision of Israel as a blessed city on a hill, a
\nlight to the surrounding nations, never really became a reality. What seemed
\nlike a reachable destination as the Israelites entered the Promised Land
\nquickly became a mirage, something that can be seen when it is far off but
\nseems to evaporate when it is right in front of you.<\/p>\n
\nEgypt just to become the oppressors in Jerusalem. The very thing they were
\nrunning from was the thing they became.<\/p>\n
\nGod, we start to do whatever we can to remain feeling safe and certain. We
\nbegin to manipulate our understanding of God to keep what feels so good to us.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s accepting that I may never arrive at certainty in my understanding of God or the ultimate meaning of life.<\/h2>\n
\nit isn\u2019t in Jerusalem either. Maybe it\u2019s coming together to walk the desert in
\ncommunity, all of us following and trusting that mysterious pillar of smoke and
\nfire that is often guiding us but never telling us where we\u2019re going (Exod.
\n13:21-22). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n