A Labyrinthine Journey

One of the longings in my heart for quite a few years has been freedom. Not just any old freedom, the freedom of grace and love that is a key component of the abundant life Jesus promises. A freedom for love and service to God and neighbor.

I certainly don’t consider myself to be anywhere close to experiencing it, but I read something yesterday that has haunted me about freedom and reconciling that desire with the feeling of being lost that has been my companion recently.

I was reading Gustavo Guitierrez’ We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People, (Orbis Books, 2003 edition) for my spiritual direction class and found this quote on pages 75 and 76 as he reflects on the Exodus as a paradigm for our spiritual journey…

Israel had to learn new ways. Its journey was through the wilderness where no pathways had been carved out in advance. There the footprints of a traveler are soon effaced by wind and sand. in a wilderness or desert we neither find nor leave a trail. Wayfareres my decide on their own path with complete freedom.

I have been haunted by the thought since I read it. Haunted by the idea that while I say I desire freedom, I still want the certainty that comes from being enslaved. While yearning for abundance, I still want to live within the safe limits of what I already know and am familiar with. While desiring the promised land, I am afraid of walking through the wilderness to get to that wild, untamed, and extravagant grace.

I guess the choice for the journey is partly between the certainty of the limits I self-impose on my life and upon my God (and the relationship with God) and the edge of the cliff/tightrope/wilderness/abyss that comes from following God toward a land that I don’t know for freedom and grace.

Right now, I am choosing certainty, but I don’t really like that choice.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 5:24 pm and is filed under life, spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.