Renewal in the Wilderness

By Jim Paraboschi

More than 20 years ago a thin book titled Who Moved My Cheese? became a worldwide bestseller. This allegorical story is about two mice and two little people who live in a maze and must search for cheese each day. Eventually, they discover a corridor with an ample supply of cheese, so they return there regularly. One day, all the cheese is gone, and they are forced to deal with this significant, life-altering change.

Likewise, the theme for the 145th Annual Gathering of churches, “Making the Shift,” helped us to focus our attention on needing to respond to change as well. We were given the opportunity to reconsider what seems like sudden changes due to the global pandemic. But, in fact, the pandemic drew our collective attention to what had been hidden from view all along. Once various distractions had been taken away, we realized the cheese had moved.

Rev. Dr. Anna Robbins offered her perspective on the realities of the situation during the Ministers’ Convocation. Indeed, we live in a fractured and fragmented world today. People yearn to return to what feels familiar and gives them comfort. They want to repeat what was done in the past and see the same results. We like to believe we’re in control and like having our expectations met. We desperately want things to get back to normal.

However, Dr. Robbins cautioned us about this way of thinking. Mere nostalgia focuses us on reproducing warm feelings of the past, but it robs us of having a true picture of what life was like back then. Our nostalgic memories can cause us to long for something that never really existed.

This was the case for the Israelites after God rescued them from bondage. Everything they had known as slaves was stripped away and left behind in Egypt. God led them into the wilderness to start a new way of life as His people. And yet, they longingly looked back at their previous life in Egypt with fondness. They reminisced about the meat pots and their favorite foods. And, they chose to selectively forget what it truly was like to live as an oppressed people (Exodus 16). Their cheese had moved, and they needed to make the shift.

We also need to make this shift. We need to recognize that the old ways of doing things have ended. However, as Dr. Robbins reminds us, we have all that we need: Jesus will lead us, the Holy Spirit will empower us, God will sustain us. We are not in control, but in the midst of it all, God will do something new.

Therefore, we can be filled with hope as we follow God in the wilderness together. We can willingly let go of the things of the past to live into new ways of being God’s people. We can prayerfully seek God in the pain of injustices, as well as carry His presence into the world to bring about redemption. We know God will continue working within us and through us.

This, indeed, may be the moment to turn everything over to God and renew our spirits in the wilderness. It’s when God will bring new life to barren places. As He said through the prophet Isaiah: “I will make rivers flow on barren heights, and springs within the valleys. I will turn the desert into pools of water, and the parched ground into springs” (Isaiah 41:18).

Decide to make a complete shift to God, and trust God to “watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore” (Psalm 121:8).

Rev. Jim Paraboschi is the Associate Pastor at Wisconsin Avenue Baptist Church (paraboschi@gmail.com).

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA