March 12, 2025 (Day 7, pages 41–45)
The wilderness has always been part of the journey. The Israelites wandered in it. Jesus was led into it. And again and again, we find ourselves there too.
The wilderness wakes us up to the truth: the things we relied on can no longer hold us. But it’s also where we come undone, where we feel lost, where we grasp for what’s familiar—even if what’s familiar was destroying us.
Nadeau describes his own moment of reckoning—the choice to leave behind what was numbing him, knowing it would force him to face what came next.
“I left the bank so I could stop drinking. But then there was the wilderness.”
It’s one thing to step away from what numbs us. It’s another to face what surfaces in its absence.
Facing Ourselves in the Wilderness
It’s easy to think of wilderness as a single, defined season—forty years for Israel, forty days for Jesus. A moment to endure before moving on.
But if we’re honest, wilderness is never just once.
The Israelites returned to it again and again. The disciples faced it after Jesus’ death. The early church walked through it as they stepped into an unfamiliar world. Wilderness isn’t a detour in the spiritual life—it’s a place we return to.
Lent comes around, year after year—forty days, again and again, pulling us back into the wilderness.
We know this, too.
There’s the wilderness of early adulthood, when we leave behind what’s familiar but don’t yet know who we are. The wilderness of grief, when life no longer makes sense, and we can’t go back to what was. The wilderness of doubt, when the faith we inherited no longer holds, and we’re left searching for something truer. The wilderness of loss, transition, failure—threshold moments between what was and what will be.
Wilderness often marks a threshold. It strips away illusions, leaving us to wrestle with the question: Who am I, really?
The Ache for Home
The wilderness exposes our deepest longing—the ache to be whole, to be at rest, to be at peace.
We spend so much of our lives striving, proving, holding everything together, afraid of what will happen if we stop. But in the wilderness, there is no more hiding. No more distractions. No more escape.
Just the truth of where we are.
And in the stillness, God meets us there.
Again and again, God meets people in the wilderness—Hagar, Jacob, Elijah, the Israelites, the disciples. Again and again, God meets us there. Not once we’ve found our way out, but right there in the middle of it.
And beneath all the striving, beneath all the fear, beneath all the noise—there it is. The longing we’ve been trying to outrun.
“And, oh God, I just want to go Home.”
I Wonder…
I wonder what I’ve been avoiding that the wilderness is trying to show me?
I wonder where I’m resisting change because I fear what comes next?
I wonder if I’ve mistaken control for security?
I wonder how I might recognize growth in my faith as I walk through the wilderness again and again?
I wonder what it would feel like to trust that God meets me here?
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This Reflection is Part of a Lenten Journey
This Lent, we’re making space for something deeper—reading Room for Good Things to Run Wild by Josh Nadeau. No book club, no meetings—just a daily invitation to reflect, in whatever way feels right for you.
Learn more, access the reading calendar, and join the journey here.
