The subtitle of City Church’s sermon series in Lent is “All who wander are not lost” from JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit. How are you at wandering with your feet, or are you so rigidly focused that you’d never dare stray off the path? And how good are you at wandering spiritually - not necessarily into places of destruction, but into places of curiosity, exploration, or longing?
The scripture suggests that Tolkien had it right. Listen in on this verse:
By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. - Hebrews 11:8
Abraham did not know where he was going. Is there a better definition of wandering? And yet, he was following God’s call. Often we place our lives on lock down to protect us from the discomfort of questioning, unwilling to face uncertainty. For some of us, this is a healthy reaction to growing up in an alcoholic household or some other undependable setting. And for some of us it has to do with not being willing to face discomfort. And yet, what if God is inviting us to open up a little bit more to the the possibilities out there in the world of goodness, of favor, of ‘an inheritance’?