For my money, the best of times for the ancient Israelites came in the wilderness.

Oh, I know they made a few mistakes out there, what with that golden calf and, if Cecil B. DeMille is to be believed, orgies every time Moses turned his back but it was also out in the wilderness that Judaism came to be formed.

It was there that the people discovered the value of laws for living together. It was there that some of the rich and wonderful aspects of the faith began to take form...caring for widows and orphans, offering a healthy diet for everyone, treating others the way one would like to be treated. This is the wisdom that was formed in the wilderness, in those forty years of wandering.

When you think about it, it wasn't until they decided to head toward the promised land that they began to act ungodly. And when you read about what some of the leadership began to do once they all got established in Jerusalem it is downright shocking.

The same can be seen in Christianity.

Although I will be the first to defend much of what the church has accomplished in reaching out to the disadvantaged and dispossessed, I don't think there can be much argument that the Church became something very different than what was once modeled by Jesus so many years ago. I think part of that is our failure to go into the wilderness from time to time.

Mark says that the spirit had to drive Jesus into the wilderness. It sounds like he wasn't all that anxious to go.

Nor are we, but it is out of the wilderness experience, out of that wandering that great things can happen. It was there that the Hebrew people discovered what it meant to be free. It was there that Jesus formed and firmed up his ministry. It is there that each of us is called.

Sadly and too often, the church tells us precisely the opposite.

It says, "Don't change. Don't grow. Don't do anything different than what has been done before. And whatever you do, don't go into the wilderness."

Things get shaken up in the wilderness.

Which is why some in the Church don't want us to go there.