The Ultimate Wilderness Guide

I was 8 years old when my family moved to Brazil. Everything changed: language, food, customs, weather. And one of the things that I at least did not expect was the absence of school buses. If Dad couldn’t take us we had to take public transportation: a taxi, a tram, a bus. We usually took a city bus. And one day, I can’t remember why, my big sister didn’t go with us. And she was the one with her head screwed on straight. So my 6-year-old brother Nate and I boarded the bus as usual, got off at what I still think was the right stop, and proceeded to get thoroughly lost. Either we turned right when we should have turned left, or we turned one street too early, or too late, the fact remains that from where we were we couldn’t see the school. Fortunately Rio de Janeiro never gets really cold, and the poverty and street crime weren’t as bad 50 years ago as they are today, so we don’t appear to have been in any actual danger. But we sat there in a little park we came across - they had swings and slides - and waited. And waited. And waited. It rained. Nate fell off the swing into a huge mud puddle. We got hungry, and thirsty, and scared. Well, eventually a woman who lived in an apartment overlooking the square called the police and they came and picked us up and delivered us to our parents, who still thought we were at school. But it could have been a lot worse, couldn’t it? Especially with the terrifying stories we see in the news nowadays, with Amber Alerts and Jessica’s Law and all the other things that remind us what a scary place we live in.

Have you ever been lost? Not just taken a wrong turn. I’ve done that, more often than I care to admit. But I always have a map in my car, so all I have to do is figure out where I went wrong and then I can get to where I’m supposed to be. And since most places are kind enough to put up street signs, I can usually figure out where I am. But when you don’t have street signs, or a map, or a compass, and the sky is overcast so that you can’t see either the sun or the stars, you’re pretty well up a creek.

That’s why there’s a search-and-rescue team in every part of the country where people go out into the wilderness. It’s all too easy to get lost. Bushwhackers - people who go hiking in places without clearly marked trails - really have to know their stuff. And even they have topographical maps and compases. Sometimes I look out at the wilderness around us and wonder what Lewis and Clark and - and the trappers who came before them - felt when they saw it for the first time. Think about it. Even with a compass you don’t know the dead ends and short cuts, or where to get water, or how soon the winter is going to close down the passes. No wonder they hired Sacajawea. She had been there before. She could show them where to go. They wanted to get there. But they needed a guide.

And that’s one of the reasons the disciples were so panicked when Jesus told them, that long ago night in Jerusalem, that he was going away. They knew they were venturing into unknown territory, and they weren’t fully briefed. They didn't know what came next, and they certainly didn’t know the path. They didn’t have a clue how they were going to get wherever it was. As it turned out, after Jesus explained it to them, they really did know the destination, but they still didn’t know what it looked like any more than they knew the twists and turns in the road. They wouldn’t have recognized the unearthly kingdom Jesus was talking about any more than their oblivious contemporaries had recognized Jesus as the Messiah. They needed help.

Don’t think too badly of them. Yeah, yeah, I know, Jesus had told them time after time after time what was coming, and they didn’t get it. They couldn’t even see what was around the corner, much less grasp the total strangeness of the adventure Jesus was calling them into. How can you understand something you’ve never experienced? And besides, it’s one thing to follow someone you trust into the wilderness, it’s a whole nother thing to have him tell you he’ll meet you there but they’ll have to get there on their own. It’s hard enough for us, and we know what Jesus and his followers were heading toward.

And it’s not just that they needed him in a practical sense. They also loved him, and they would miss him. They would be lonely. And yet with all of these negatives Jesus still says that is to their advantage for him to go away. I don’t know about you, but when I hear, “This is for your own good,” I start to count the silverware.