Wilderness and Becoming

You may remember that in my last post I wrote about wordlessness. It was timely, because I’ve felt myself without words again over these last few weeks. I’ve found thinking, much less writing, hard. Instead I’ve been reading—reading lots of things about how to think through and name what is going on in our world right now. Here is a sermon from one of my professors, Stephanie Paulsell, on things unseen, including viruses but also conviction. Here is an article on the importance of the ordinary during these times. And below is a talk my mom gave a few months ago on wilderness, which I’ve been thinking about ever since. Thanks for letting me steal it, Mom.

In the beginning, Lehi received a vision from God telling him to leave Jerusalem and go into the wilderness. In the account of this story by Lehi’s son, Nephi, the wilderness looms large. It looms not only as a place but also as a metaphor for affliction. It existed as a wilderness not only because of its location but also because of what it lacked—the familiar as well as dreams once held dear.

It is not difficult to imagine that when Nephi traveled through the wilderness in the plains, wadis, and mountains of the Middle East; across the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean; and even the new-to-him uncharted Promised Land he missed the briny taste of olives and goat cheese. Did he also miss the colorful cacophony of Jerusalem’s marketplace? Did he miss the wet/dry smell of rain on the dusty streets of Jerusalem? 

It doesn’t take imagination to suggest that in the wilderness Nephi desired, like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, to “[discuss] the learned books with the holy men seven hours every day” (Lyric Find, accessed January 25) because shards of evidence suggest that Nephi loved talking about the scriptures. He said:  “For my soul delighteth in the scriptures, and my heart pondereth them, and writeth them. . . . Behold, my soul delighteth in the things of the Lord” (2 Nephi 4: 15-16).

Nephi’s record hints that he missed scintillating conversations with other scholars of the scriptures, particularly the words of Isaiah. He noted: “I know that the Jews do understand the things of the prophets, and there is none other people that understand the things which were spoken unto the Jews like unto them, save it be that they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews” (2 Nephi 25:5).

Why might God have sent the Lehites away from the temple, away from religious scholars, away from what they held dear to travel for so long in the the wilderness? 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that  “the Hebrew word midbar, wilderness, has the same root as the word dabar/davar, meaning ‘word’ or ‘thing.’ It has the same letters as medabber, ‘speaking.’ It is in the wilderness that the Israelites [referring to the time of Moses] hear revelation, the word or speaking of G-d.”

Rabbi Sacks argued that the wilderness was critical to the Israelites letting go of their reliance on sight and instead learning to rely on hearing God’s voice: “In the great river lowlands where civilization began (the Tigris-Euphrates and the Nile) the eye is captivated by the shifting scenes of nature; in cities by the works of man—art and architecture. Only in the emptiness of the wilderness is the eye subordinate to the ear…. [It is] as if G-d could not be apprehended without this initial journey into the desert.”

It for this reason I believe Lehi and his people wandered so long in wilderness—so they could more fully and consistently hear the voice of God and become his people. They required his help to meet their daily travel needs: where to hunt, where to travel, how to build a boat, how to raise a family on the move. But they also needed his guidance to meet their afflictions: the growing old age of Sariah and Lehi, the conflict between Nephi and his older brothers, how to find and hold on to faith, and how to deal with loneliness and despair. That Nephi struggled in the wilderness is captured eloquently in 2 Nephi 4 where he psalmed: “O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.”

How did Nephi know who to trust? By hearing God in the wilderness.

“My God hath been my support; he hath led me through mine afflictions in the wilderness; and he hath preserved me upon the waters of the great deep. He hath filled me with his love, even unto the consuming of my flesh. . . . Behold, he hath heard my cry by day, and he hath given me knowledge by visions in the night-time. And by day have I waxed bold in mighty prayer before him” (2 Nephi 4).

This is why I love the story of the Lehites in the wilderness and how I came to love Nephi. It was in the wilderness that Nephi transformed from a rash youth who exuded zeal without knowledge, to one who saw his own complicity and weaknesses and who, through his interactions with God, gained a faith that gave beginning to the Book of Mormon—a book that also helps us hear the word of God. The Nephi who wrote this account became in the wilderness.

I love that Nephi became. It gives me hope that I can become.

When I was younger, I found it impossible to forgive. What I knew how to do was nurture and hold on to hurts.  When I read in the story of the wilderness that young Nephi did “frankly forgive” his brothers (1 Nephi 7:20), I felt like there was something wrong with me.  But once when traveling through one my own wildernesses, I “discovered” the Hymn of Nephi and found that older Nephi struggled with despondency and forgiving his brothers, even designating them “enemy” (2 Nephi 4).

If this great prophet struggled with forgiveness, then I could hold on to hope.   

In the wilderness that I traveled at one time, it became evident, very evident, that I needed the Lord to help me forgive. I read in the Bible Dictionary that prayer is the work we do to align our will with God and to enable him to share with us the blessings he delights to open up to us. I began to see that instead of praying with the end result in mind, I needed to examine the questions I brought before the Lord and reframe them.

I decided to do the work of prayer. Instead of praying for the ability to frankly forgive another, I went to the Lord with another prayer, and it was “why can’t I forgive?”  The heavens opened. I was told that I couldn’t forgive because I wasn’t yet capable of it.  While this was somewhat embarrassing, it was also a huge relief. A relief because in this particular instance I had tried with all my soul to forgive and had prayed for the gift of forgiveness with deep intensity for an extended period of time. And, so, to hear that, in fact, I had been right and that I required God’s help, opened up the possibility of tender mercy.  Importantly, my prompting included the promise that God would teach me to forgive. I tell you, for me, learning to forgive has been a much greater gift and journey than if God had answered my early prayers with the instantaneous gift of forgiveness; because along the way I learned about humility, compassion, prayer, and love.  Like Nephi, God’s answers in the wilderness help me to become.

Rabbi Sacks noted that “When the world has become Desert, man is at last in the solitude in which he can hear thunderingly the voice of the spirit that with its urgent whispering has already driven and rescued him. In the Desert G-d spoke to [Moses] and his tribes; in the desert, by listening to the voice, by accepting its offer, and by submitting to its command, they had at last reached life and became [a] people [of] G-d.”

It was in the wilderness that Nephi learned to become a man of God. It is in our own wilderness that we too can become God’s own.

I bear witness of this. I bear witness that learning to hear God is a process, hard won—often over time, but sometimes in a moment. I bear witness that in the crucible of our wilderness, God yearns for us to choose to do the work necessary to find the prayers that allow us to tune our ears and our hearts to hearing him and that allow him to open the heavens and share with us the blessings that he has in mind for us. When we hear his voice, we can then find our way through the wilderness and become.

—by Cynthia Compton