Why Wander?

I just watched a wanderer stroll away from the church where I work. Our prime location – on a corner lot just off the interstate – seems to bring us quite a few visitors like him, bearded men in dirty clothes.

They come carrying tattered backpacks and dreadful aromas. They come spilling out pre-planned sob stories and pleas for monetary help. They come looking for pity. But they get none from me.

I don’t feel compassion when they come, only anger, fear, and frustration. I wish them away. I lock the doors if I’m alone. And my stomach turns in fear as long as they’re in proximity.

Today’s visitor was locked out. He tried both doors – first the sanctuary, then the office. And I waited, quietly tucked behind a corner with the lights off. When he walked away, I watched each and every footstep, making certain that he was headed in a different direction.

A dark coat and a blue stocking cap drifted further and further from eyesight, one staggering step after another, in a rhythm – a slow rhythm.

Why wander? I thought. What is the purpose?

Can you imagine waking up in the morning with no place to go? With no family members to greet? No car to hop into? No phone to dial out of? Just a dark coat and a blue stocking cap? Just the cold winter air and a desperate need for a few bucks?

I swore I wasn’t going to write a traditional New Year’s article about making and keeping New Year’s resolutions, just like everybody expects. However, that’s what this comes down to. A wanderer has no goals, nothing driving him out of despair, nothing offering him true life. He simply meanders about, relying on others. Offering nothing and taking all he can.

What a sad existence!

Have you ever noticed that God used wandering as a punishment in the Bible?

In Genesis 4:11-13 we see Him speaking to Cain after the murder of his brother Abel. “Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear.”

And in Numbers 32:13, God uses the same punishment for the Israelites: The Lord's anger burned against Israel and he made them wander in the desert forty years, until the whole generation of those who had done evil in his sight was gone.

When He was at the end of His rope, when He was faced with blatantly disobedient children, God chose wandering as their curse. He left them to a life without hope, without purpose, without relationship. They chose this life by not choosing Him.

Have you started drifting away from God? Is your day-to-day life lived in ignorance of His eternal purpose? Does it ever feel like you’ve secluded yourself from the things that matter most? Like you’ve taken to the streets in pursuit of something small, while forgetting or growing weary of the things in life that are big?

Let’s discard our filthy rags, our dark coats, and blue stocking caps. Let’s scrap everything we’ve cloaked ourselves in during our attempts to run away. Let’s find our way back to true Life. And let’s share that Life with one another.

(from Jeremiah 50)
They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it.

They will come and bind themselves to the Lord

in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten.

"My people have been lost sheep;

their shepherds have led them astray

and caused them to roam on the mountains.

They wandered over mountain and hill

and forgot their own resting place.

Whoever found them devoured them;

their enemies said, 'We are not guilty,

for they sinned against the Lord, their true pasture,

the LORD, the hope of their fathers.'

We have a true pasture, our own resting place. We have the hope of a covenant that will not be forgotten. We have Jesus.

Why wander?