The Sauntering Pilgrim

It’s an ancient and deeply human question, as relevant today as when the psalmist put it into words three millennia ago. “When the world falls apart, what can the good hope to do” (Ps. 11:3 ICEL)? Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message, “The bottom’s dropped out of the country” and it seems “good people don’t have a chance.”

The world may not be falling apart – we’ve survived worse times than these – but the news today makes me wonder. We hear of wars and rumors of wars. Terrorism and violence pervade our national life, and a new fascism threatens to drop the bottom out of our nation’s fragile experiment in governance as a representative republic. We’re witnessing a self-induced collapse of the environment and an astounding abandonment of science and reason. And divisive rhetoric has become standard fare in our public discourse. Do good people have a chance today?

Maybe your crisis is more personal than the ones you read about in the daily news. Your world might fall apart when you finally make the dreaded visit to the doctor and receive the diagnosis you’ve been fearing, or because you’ve been downsized out of a job and you don’t have a Plan B, but you do have a mortgage due, and bills to pay, and a family to feed, and all the other expenses that go with living today. Or because a loved one died, or a friendship ended, or you finally achieved a life-long dream, one you built your life around, and you’re left wondering “Now what?” and don’t have an answer. When your world falls apart, what can you hope to do?

It’s a question Elijah might have asked when the God he trusted, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, stood in stark contrast with Baal, the popular local god that today we might call the god of the prosperity gospel. When Elijah showed how Yahweh was triumphant over the god of prosperity, Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, the top political dog of his day, threatened Elijah’s life. In utter despair, Elijah fled to the wilderness, sat under a broom tree, and waited to die (1 Kings 19:4-8). When our world falls apart and the bottom falls out of our nation, what can the good hope to do? Elijah helps us answer the question.

First, he fled to the wilderness, where he sat down under a solitary broom tree. He did what Jesus would later do when he was under stress and needed to get his feet back on the ground: he retreated from the world. At critical times in his life, Jesus retreated to pray – in a deserted place (Mark 1:35), on a mountain (Luke 9:28), in a garden (John 18:1). Thoreau retreated to a cabin in the woods. Poet Wendell Berry would retreat “into the peace of wild things” (“The Peace of Wild Things”).

When I was younger, I’d retreat to a limestone promontory overlooking the Mississippi River along the Trail of Tears. These days I retreat to a chair overlooking our backyard gardens, or to Sinking Ponds Wildlife Sanctuary, or to a favorite porch at Chautauqua. Where is it for you, the place where you leave your cares and burdens behind and find peace? When the world and its trouble press too close, remember, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15), and go sit under your broom tree where you can be still and know that God is God (Ps. 46:10).

Under the broom tree is a good place to sleep. Your body probably needs it more than you know, and your spirit certainly does. A good sleep helps us keep life in perspective, it offers an opportunity to refocus on who we truly are, and it’s the state in which it’s easier to hear God speak to us. Remember, in a dream Jacob knew God’s assurance that he would be a blessing to all the world (Gen. 28:18-17), and it was in a dream that Samuel was called to bring God’s word to bear in the life of his people (1 Sam. 3). To embody God’s will effectively, to do what God would have us do, we need to dream, and to dream, we need to sleep well. When our world seems to be falling apart, it’s more important than ever to retreat regularly to the wilderness, to a sabbath day or season – a place in time – and trust God to care for the world while we give ourselves to sleep.

And under your broom tree is a good place to listen for God’s whispers and find the nourishment God provides close at hand. For Elijah, that nourishment was a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. Ours is the bread of life that came down from heaven (John 6:35), and our water is the wine of new life that will never leave us thirsty (John 2:1-11). “When I found your words,” Jeremiah wrote, “I devoured them; they became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jer. 15:16). The early church found new strength in the apostles’ teaching, in their fellowship with one another, in sharing meals together, and in praying together (Acts 2:42). When our world seems to fall apart, we can reground ourselves in private and public Bible study, fellowship, regularly sharing meals together, and personal and corporate prayer.

When the world is too much with us, when the world seems to be falling apart and it feels like it’s falling on us, go to your broom tree, your sacred place or the sacred time you carve out of your busy schedule. Retreat there for sacred rest and renewal, open yourself to the deep thing God is saying to you, be nourished by what God is ready to provide. And remember, the broom tree was not the end of Elijah’s story. God still had more for him to do, and God still has more for us to do. There is more ahead of us than the hard time we’re facing. And under that broom tree, remember what Edgar A. Guest captured in his poem, “When Things Go Wrong” (altered).

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When we might have won had we stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering hand.
Often the struggler has given up
When we might have captured the victor’s cup,
And we learned too late when the night slipped down
How close we were to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
You can never tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stay the course when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.