Ten Observations After Nine Months In The Wilderness (#8 Will Probably Shock You)

1) Less But Better—I am learning to filter through my activities, friends, needs, longings, and opportunities in order to select only those that are truly essential and meaningful.

2) Does It Matter On Tuesday?— If a purchase or decision won’t make a significant difference every day of the week—we don’t do it.

3) Don’t Worry About Things Out Of Your Control—I’ve heard it all my life. 99% of what I worry about doesn’t come to pass. But in the wilderness that truth is exponentially magnified. I can’t control the weather, the insects, the dangers, and it does absolutely no good to worry about them. Worry never changes the future and always harms me.

4) Live With No Regrets—I’ve confessed my sins, I’ve realized I’m human, I’ve asked forgiveness, I reject shame, I have no secrets—and I choose not to sleep in history’s unmade bed. I am now FREE and CLEAR.

5) Be/Live in the Present—Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, only the present moment is real.

6) God is Everywhere—Whatever God looks like (and I’m pretty sure it’s not what we evangelical Americans think), she is not relegated to a church. The wilderness has already taught me more about God in nine months than all my previous fifty-six years of church attendance.

7) Mainstream Media is Scaring Us To Death—After ten years not watching media, when I occasionally have the misfortune to see it—it is like watching depraved beauty pageant rejects who are really bad actors trying to convince me they really care that someone or something is trying to kill me everyday of my life.

8) Organized Religion Has Become Irrelevant—Most churches are political machines that have sold themselves for thirty pieces of silver. It is impossible for them to intimately care about flawed human beings. They simply don’t have the time or energy. The point is, most of their limited supply of attention is committed to the tasks of surviving from one day to the next. Over the lifecycle of a church, the amount of attention left over for ministering to those who fail is a fraction of this already small amount. It’s the nature of the beast. And so the “American success stories” become the poster children and leaders of the modern church and the wounded and weary are slowly but surely forgotten. The Americanization of the church has bequeathed her a lifeless entitlement.

9) Most People Live In Fear—We are afraid of our shadow. Afraid of God, afraid of our neighbor, afraid of terrorists, afraid of people who don’t look like us, afraid of our government—and probably the most tragic of all—we are afraid of our selves; afraid of our deepest longings and our hidden secrets.

10) A Long Walk Through The Woods Will Cure Almost Anything—From our earliest days there is something inherent that draws us to nature. Spending time in the woods will give you better health. Fresh air and sunshine have been remedies since the beginning of time. One study calls it “forest bathing.” It found that being among plants and trees lowers concentrations of cortisol (stress hormones), and lowers pulse rate and blood pressure. Other studies have shown that a walk in the woods raises the level of white blood cells and other beneficial immune factors including cancer fighting proteins.