One of the challenges of this week’s readings is that we live in a time when the concept of wilderness is something we understand as removed from human life. There is such a gulf between the wilderness and the human, at least in how we think of it. How can this week collapse that boundary? We hear whispers of how the wilderness transformed Jesus. We see how the wilderness inspires Joel and the psalmist. How can we make the wilderness something that transforms the center of our lives as well? How might that benefit the world today, and bring us into closer communion with God’s creation?
The wilderness is also an inward experience –it is physically “out there,” but perhaps it is also at the center of our lives.